


Autumn at Summerview Inn

by LadyEttejin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Feels, Arguing, Cussing, F/M, Flirting, Friendship, Gen, Jealousy, Kissing, Monster of the Week, Nightmares, Original Character Death(s), Slow Build, Slow Burn, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:33:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 55,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27338743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyEttejin/pseuds/LadyEttejin
Summary: Becca Norwood lives an average life in the Inn which has been in her family for decades - until one autumn night, when trouble walks through the front door. With Dean's arrival, followed by the death of a guest, then a visit from the FBI, Becca's boring life is about to change.(This one's definitely, definitely a slow build. Each day this month I'll post a new chapter. I hope y'all enjoy it :) thanks for reading!)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 5





	1. The Guest

“Aye, lass,” he said, his usually baritone voice made into a huskier bass with barely repressed emotion. “That’ll be the day. One day soon, when the MacDonalds and the McLeods can sit down and share a meal together without either side drawing a blade, that’ll be the day.” He raised his hand to cup her face, and despite the fire warming the room, she couldn’t help but tremble as his rough thumb brushed her cheek. This man, she thought, this man could lead her straight into hell and she’d follow him laughing. She lifted her gaze---

The sound of rain crashing into the lobby brought Becca jolting back out of her book and into the present. She bit the inside of her cheek, resisting the urge to be impatient with the guest whose arrival had allowed the storm outside to come in with him. She glanced over at the clock. 3:15 AM. Lovely.  


With a sigh, she grabbed a sticky note. She folded it quickly over itself into a rectangle, sticky side in, and slid it ruefully into her paperback. Just when it was getting good. She sighed again as she placed the book face down on the desk out of habit. ("It really won’t do," her mother was constantly saying. "What will the guests think?" Honestly, if the guests couldn’t handle the sight of a shirtless man in a kilt, they had softer sensibilities than Becca had patience for. Still, for Mother’s sake, when guests entered the lobby, the books went facedown.) She folded her hands in front of her and looked back over at the new arrival.  


He was standing on the mat, looking down at the ground, shaking off his jacket and letting a veritable waterfall pool at his feet. At least he’d shut the door behind him, but with the state he was in, there was absolutely no way he was going to come over to reception without leaving a sopping trail across the tiles behind him. How did he get so completely soaked? Had he walked here? Did he not have a car? Out of idle curiosity, Becca peeked at the parking lot security camera video. Yes, there was a new car there, parked next to Mr. Winslow’s truck. Becca didn’t know make and model for anything. It wasn’t knowledge she ever had need of, so she hadn’t ever bothered with learning. It was nice, though, that much she could tell. An older model well taken care of.  


“Welcome to Summerview,” Becca said in her best customer service voice. “How may I help you this evening?”  


“Isn’t it morning yet?” His voice was brittle, as if he hadn’t spoken in days and was just now getting back into the habit. He raised a hand to push his sodden bangs out of his eyes. Becca bit the inside of her cheek again at the sight of them. The eyes didn’t fit the rest of him. They were too awake, too bright, too alert, much too green. It was unsettling, to say the least.  


Becca shook the feeling off and gave him the smile to go along with the voice. “I suppose technically yes, sir, it is morning hours. May I help you?”  


“I need a room.” He was over to the desk in three short strides, and Becca had to fight to keep her eyebrows from darting up to the ceiling. He probably moved so fast because he was so tall, she mused to herself as she gave him the once over.  


Black hair – no, brown, made darker by the rain. Somewhere around six feet tall. A regular joe, denim jeans, plain tee, leather jacket. Unbothered with the weather, that was something. He was young too, she thought, probably somewhere in his thirties, although those eyes seemed older. Those eyes. For fuck’s sake, she thought, be professional.  


“Do you have a reservation?” She knew the answer was no – all the reservations were checked in and accounted for – but still, she reached over for the computer mouse all the same.  


“I don’t,” he said. He leaned casually on the counter, a small pool of water gathering where his elbow met the wood. “Look. I’ll be honest. I’ve been on the road three days straight. I haven’t eaten since last Saturday. Can’t remember the last time I had a hot shower. I’m cold, I’m sore, and I have no idea where I am. Saw your lights and made my way here. I’m exhausted, lady. I don’t need the whole customer service bit. I just need a warm place to sleep. Hell, at this point, I’d be fine with crashing over there.” He gestured to the sofas on the other side of the lobby.  


“Oh no,” Becca couldn’t stop herself from saying. She inhaled sharply and bit the inside of her mouth again. When she met his gaze, his eyes had that same alert sharpness to them that had startled her so before.  


“Not for the likes of me. That what you mean?” The censure dripping from his voice, the wounded pride, carried over clearly.  


Becca felt a flutter of shame followed immediately by a surge of anger. She straightened her shoulders. She was better than that, no matter what this rando thought. “I just meant those are too short for you. You’d wake up in more pain than you’d believe.” She turned her attention, as professionally as she possibly could, to the computer in front of her. A few rapid clicks later, and she said, “We do have a few rooms available. Will you be paying with cash or credit?”  


“Cash,” he said. He pulled an old worn wallet from his jeans. “How much?”  


“Sixty for the night,” Becca said. “We serve breakfast from eight to ten, that’s included with the room, and checkout is at eleven.”  


The grimace passed over his face so quickly Becca thought at first she had imagined it. He pulled a handful of wrinkled bills from the wallet and lay them on the counter.  


“Thank you, sir. May I see your ID?”  


He hesitated, another quick and seamless gesture that passed by almost without notice. Becca wondered if that was a habit with him, to lie so constantly. It must be, if he was this confident and practiced at it. When he passed her his ID, she stared at it for a moment, wondering. Was this a lie too? It looked real enough, but there was something about it that gave her pause. She couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but she pondered over it all the same. Maybe it was the photo. She’d never seen a driver’s license photo look quite so… polished. Then again, maybe that had less to do with the DMV and more to do with the perfect symmetry of this particular face.  


As she typed the information on the ID into the system, she gave him one more quick assessment. He’d been honest when he said he was exhausted. The way he rested on the counter, now that she took a moment to really look, was less casual and more for support, although that again was a way he was lying. Maybe just a concealment. Maybe not an outright lie. Was he dangerous? Was she stupid? Maybe, and maybe again. But his money was good, and he’d provided the identification when asked. Furthermore, she didn’t want to turn him away. Not with eyes like that. She sighed again.  


He shifted from one foot to another, and Becca stiffened. She glanced up, and found those eyes staring straight at her. He’d noticed her sigh. He was assessing her, the same way she’d been assessing him. And then his right eyebrow twitched vaguely upward, and she realized with a jolt that he’d realized she knew he was assessing. What a mess.  


She pressed enter to complete the registration and quickly turned to the key case. “You’ll be in room seventeen,” she said, trying (and failing somewhat) to keep her voice low and steady. “That’s on the second floor, on the west side of the building. The stairs are down the hall to your right. We also have an elevator, if you’d prefer.”  


“Stairs will be just fine,” he said, and she could hear a glimmer of mirth in his voice. For some reason, that just made her mad. She bit her lip as she pulled the key to room seventeen from the case and forced herself to shake it off. When she turned back to him, she had successfully recreated the customer service smile.  


“Thank you for choosing Summerview. I hope you enjoy your stay. Please call down to the front desk if there’s anything further I can assist you with, Mr. Morrison.”  


He reached out slowly for the key, and when he had it in his grasp, he didn’t take it right away. “Thank you,” he said, and he paused to look down at her nametag. “Rebecca.”  


“You’re very welcome, Mr. Morrison,” she said. And then, with a sudden rush of “what the fuck has come over you, you idiot,” she added, “unless we’re on a first name basis and I can call you James?”  


The pause that came from him now was genuine, and his honest surprise almost made her laugh. Then he grinned at her, a low slow grin that made her clench her toes inside her shoes. “What basis would you like us to be on, Rebecca?”  


Oh lord. That meant too much. For a moment there, she couldn’t come up with a proper response. Just because she’d lived a sheltered homebound life, that didn’t mean she couldn’t handle this. For fuck’s sake, she’d read enough. She'd gone to college not too long ago. Surely she could remember how to be flirty. Surely she could be clever. Surely she could do anything other than stand there flushed like a fish and staring like a fool. She blinked, twice in quick succession, and then returned the smile. “Becca,” she said.  


“Becca,” he repeated. Her name flowed from his mouth like honey, rich and warm and inviting. Oh lord, she thought again. She let go of the key, leaving it in his hand. For a second there, it stayed suspended in space, and then he pulled it to him, reluctantly enough that she noticed. “Thanks,” he said, lifting the key up in a gentle gesture of gratitude. “See you around.”  


When he disappeared from sight down the hallway, Becca let out the breath she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding. She never acted like this, not in her entire life. Then again, none of the guests had ever been… quite like that. She picked up her book again, but she couldn’t focus on it at all. She reread the same page three times before she gave up.  


She slid the bookmark back into place, shut the book, and set it in its place inside the drawer behind the counter. She looked up at the clock. Only a quarter to four. Desk duty for another four hours yet. She sighed and put a hand over her eyes. What a night it was turning out to be. What a day it was going to become. When would he wake up? Would she be asleep by then? Maybe he’d check out while she was sleeping. Maybe she would never see him again.  


Her stomach clenched at the thought, although she couldn’t give herself a rational reason why. She knew nothing about him, except that he was a liar. She knew that for a certainty. Maybe he wasn’t a liar for nefarious reasons. He didn’t seem bad. Dangerous, absolutely. She’d thought that before and she still thought that now. Dangerous, but not bad.  


No, she sighed for the millionth time. He couldn’t be bad.  


Not with eyes like that.


	2. The Inn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca finishes her shift at the desk, despite the distraction of her thoughts about a certain handsome stranger.

The next four hours dragged by like a paddle through mud. Every fifteen minutes, Becca picked up her book again and gave reading it the good old college try. But where she should have been picturing Connor McLeod, oldest son of Clan McLeod, she found herself replacing his dark Scottish face with the lightly freckled features of James Morrison. Then her brain would spin her off out of the highlands and into some daydream scenario or another.

He comes back down to the desk to ask if we have an ice machine.

He comes back down to the desk because he can’t figure out how to dial out from his room and he needs her to explain the phones.

He comes back down to the desk dripping wet again and wearing nothing but a towel, because he’s inadvertently locked himself out of his room.

He comes back down to the desk with no excuse, just wanting to see her.

He comes back down to the desk.

He comes back down.

But no matter whatever images she spun up in her head, no matter how fervently she tried to will it into being, he didn’t come back down, not any time during the rest of her shift at the desk. When the clock rolled around to seven, and Becca heard footsteps approaching from the hall, she turned, half hope and half agony, knowing not to expect much but wanting it all the same.

But it was only Mother, as it would be. As it always was.

Her entire life, Becca had lived here at the Inn. She wasn’t alone in that. Her father had been born in the Inn, as was his father, as was his grandfather, and by a strange coincidence, his grandmother as well. The Inn had seen the lives of generations of Norwoods pass through its halls. That was just the way it was, and the way it had been, ever since Sebastien Norwood had constructed Summerview in 1872.

The Inn’s age, for a certainty, was part of what drew visitors to Summerview on such a regular basis. It drew the history buffs in like moths to flame. Over the years, the Norwood family had come to possess quite a few historical treasures. Paintings, statues, handwritten letters, photographs of the famous people who had stayed in the Inn. Each and every room (excepting the family’s rooms in the attic) had some unique historical artifact displayed within it.  


The Inn attracted passersby as well, just from the sheer imposition of it. Although the settlements became cities, and roads had changed over time, the Inn’s placement on the cliffside overlooking the Summer River Valley kept it in a full 360 view to the land below. And what they could see! Sebastien Norwood had been both artist and architect. Although the basic lines of the house followed conventional architectural techniques of the time, the façade did anything but. Curved tiles, great wide windows, intricate stonework, flamboyant turrets, fanciful gargoyles unlike any other the America of the time had to offer. The building stood tall on the hillside like a dark cathedral, drawing all eyes from the valley below.

But then, where the outside felt grand and somewhat imposing, the interior of the Inn felt completely otherwise. Everywhere you went was warmth and wood and light. The building had been designed with natural sunlight and an open flow in mind, and from the very instant a guest stepped into the lobby, they knew this was a welcoming place. That welcome came not only from the building, from the comfort of the soft beds and warm quilts, from the hearty meals served daily, but also from the Norwoods themselves. The family had always lived in the Inn. The family had always loved the Inn. It was an expectation which demanded to be fulfilled. 

Becca herself, although she hated to admit it, sometimes struggled to meet that expectation. When Mother arrived in the mornings to take over the desk, she was invariably honestly warm in a way that Becca couldn’t ever quite replicate herself. Becca had always been a little in awe of how her mother came downstairs every morning, bright and chipper and smiling.

“Good morning,” Mother said. “How was the night?”

“Quiet,” Becca immediately replied, and then let out a slow breath. “But we have a new guest. He’s in room seventeen.”

“Oh? When did that happen?” Mother came behind the desk, and Becca traded places with her.

“A few hours ago,” Becca said. “I told him about breakfast, but he didn’t seem too eager. Honestly, he seemed half a minute from passing out on the floor. You probably won’t see him until check out.”

Mother seated herself and clicked at the computer. “Room seventeen,” she said, finding the reservation Becca had created in the system. “California license, how nice. It’s been a while since we had one of those here. James Morrison. How cute.”

“He was- I mean, what is?” Becca’s face felt flushed and she hoped she’d covered well.

From the way her mother’s head turned ever so slightly sideways, she had noticed. From the way her mother’s mouth opened, she had clearly questioned. But then, from the way she didn’t ask anything, she seemed to dismiss whatever thought she had, and turned her gaze back to the computer screen. “James Morrison,” Mother repeated. “Almost Jim Morrison. I wonder if he goes by Jim, or if he would have been made fun of in school for it. Children can be so cruel, for the most ridiculous reasons.”

“Jim- Oh,” Becca said with sudden realization. “Like the singer.”

“Precisely,” Mother said as she closed out the file. “Of course, his parents most likely have chosen James on purpose with the reference in mind. When I was in elementary school, I knew a girl whose name was Shirley Jones. Can you imagine, a six-year-old named Shirley. But then again, we always called her Lee.”

When Becca lifted a hand to stifle a yawn, Mother let that topic drop with a gentle smile. “Go on to the kitchens. Get yourself something warm to eat before bed. I can take over from here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Becca said. She turned to go and then stopped short. “Mrs. Kettleman should be arriving in a few hours. Do you need me to make sure her room’s ready?”

In her lifetime working for the Inn, Becca had gotten to know some of the regulars fairly well, and even had a few favorites. Mrs. Kettleman was absolutely one of those favorites. She’d been a regular at Summerview since before Becca was even born; she’d made a yearly habit of stopping in on her way to and from her brother’s house in Kentucky when she traveled there for the Kettleman Family Reunions. Mrs. K hated those reunions (she had her “reasons,” as she’d say, and the melodramatic way she always drew out both syllables of the word “reasons” always made Becca laugh), but she made the trip. She’d confessed more than once how she relished the excuse to stop at Summerview Inn, and she always, always, stayed in room eight. The window in that room looked directly out onto the gardens behind the building, and in early autumn the leaves were always at their most vibrant.

“I’m sure Meg’s already taken care of that, but I suppose doing another check is never a bad idea. After you have your supper, if you please,” Mother said with a stifled laugh in her throat. “You’re a good kid, Becca, but you always want to do too much.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rebecca repeated. “I’ll see you tonight. Have a good day.”

She turned and left her mother at the desk. She crossed the lobby and headed down the eastern hall toward the dining room which separated the kitchens from the main house. It had been constructed that way with thoughts of fire prevention in mind, and although she could recognize the wisdom in that, Becca still wished the kitchens weren’t quite such a distance away. It was almost enough to make her pack a sack lunch to eat at the desk. Almost, but not quite enough. Paperback novels might have been tolerated, but food at the front desk? Absolutely unbelievably forbidden.

There were only a few rules like that in Summerview Inn. The first absolute rule, no food or drink while at the front desk. There’d been an incident in 1969 when Grandma Norwood had inadvertently destroyed three logbooks and almost started an electrical fire with a plate of potato salad and an errant glass of sweet iced tea. The second absolute rule, keep the noise levels down in the attic bedrooms so as not to disturb the guests on the second floor. That one had never been much of a problem for Becca, but for her brother Charlie, that was another story altogether. Especially when he’d decided to learn how to play the drums. She hoped that while the Black Vinyard Brigade was out on tour, Charlie was keeping the music to a reasonable level, but with the BVB being a rock band, she highly doubted it. And then there was the third rule, which Becca had never had reason to resent, which was the one banning what her mother delicately called “fraternizing” with the guests. Although she bore none of them ill will, Becca had never even had the slightest inclination to fraternize with any of them. She’d had her fill of fraternizing in college, and there she’d had single guys her own age to choose from, rather than the old or the married or the customers. The fact that’s what guests were, really, customers, that put an absolute halt on any feelings she might have otherwise felt.

And then came Mister Perfection. Mister Godlike Facial Symmetry. Mister Why-the-fuck-does-your-voice-sound-like-THAT. Man, oh, man, did she want to do some fraternizing.

In the kitchen, Becca made herself a quick bowl of cereal. She didn’t have the energy to turn on the stove, and in her currently distracted state of mind, she didn’t trust herself around an open flame. She sat there, barely chewing, and thinking about him. Maybe it was a good thing he’d just dropped in without a reservation. That meant he wasn’t here on vacation, he was literally just passing through, and he wouldn’t keep the room for another night.

Then again… what if he did?

As Becca rinsed her bowl in a sink, she mulled over the benefits of maybe, just this once, bending the rules just a little.


	3. The Nightmare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca's day ends on an abrupt and terrifying note.

When she’d finished in the kitchens, Becca made her way down to room eight to doublecheck that everything had been readied for Mrs. Kettleman. As she opened the door, the pale light of the burgeoning dawn filtered through the crack in the curtains. Becca flicked on the overhead light and entered the room.

Everything was as it should be. Meg had even gone a step further than required and put a bowl of fresh oranges next to the flower vase on the second bedside table. Everyone at Summerview liked Mrs. K. She was just the kind of grandmotherly sort who’d adopt you as soon as look at you, and they’d all agreed (although none of them had ever actually spoken that agreement aloud) that she deserved to have as nice a stay as they could all possibly contrive.

Becca leaned over the vase and sniffed the lilies. Some flowers had no scent at all to her, but lilies! Aromatic wasn’t a strong enough word. They were her favorite for a reason. Becca gently patted the flowers into a more pleasing, symmetrical arrangement, and immediately (damn it all!) thought of the guest in room seventeen. Was this how it was going to be from now on? She’d see some completely innocuous thing and immediately picture a perfect stranger’s face in her mind? He didn’t matter. He’d check out at eleven. She needed to get over it.

Still. The question of would she be able to. 

Becca sighed and went to exit the room. As she flicked out the light, the pale rays of the sun finally rising over the valley peeked into room eight. For Becca Norwood, that meant it was time to go to sleep. She didn’t mind being nocturnal. She had always been a night owl, even as a child, before she took up the family mantle of helping the Inn run smoothly. For her, it had been a surprisingly easy transition to go from unemployed preteen to teenager on Friday's and Saturday's night shift desk duty, balancing that with the responsibilities of school over the rest of the week. In the gap year she took after high school, she'd fallen very comfortably into a fully inverted daily routine, sleeping from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon. She’d known then what a struggle it would be to revert her inner clock to diurnal hours in order to take college courses, and she really hadn’t been looking forward to the experience. She’d almost wanted to skip college altogether, but Mother had encouraged her to go. “Your father would have wanted you and your brother to explore the world a little,” she’d said.

Which was true, Becca had to admit. Her father, David Norwood, had earned not just a bachelor’s degree but a master’s as well, both in history. It was in his memory that Becca had chosen her major. She’d made the deliberate decision to go to the same university from which he’d graduated those thirty-three years ago, and she’d even taken been able to take classes with some of the same professors he’d had. Truth be told, her own favorite classes had been the few she took in biology to fill out the core requirements – but struggling with memorizing names and dates was absolutely worth it, even if it meant finishing with a 2.8 grade point average (which she’d barely managed). It helped her to feel close to him again. When she read through the textbooks for those history classes, she could almost hear her father’s voice echoing back to her from the pages.

Sometimes it was hard for her to remember that voice. David Norwood had died nearly twenty-five years ago, when Becca had only been a few years old. He hadn’t died in a tragic accident. He hadn’t died violently. He had just… died. He went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up again the next day. At first, it seemed like he’d just taken a short trip somewhere, and as if at any moment he’d come sauntering back in through the lobby doors, whistling. He’d used to whistle all the time. How could he be gone, when he hadn’t had any health problems, when he went jogging with Mother literally every morning, when he wasn’t even thirty years old? As she’d grown older, Becca had only gotten angrier about the injustice of it all.

The anniversary of her father’s death was coming up. She kept the date hidden in the back of her mind, trying to ignore it, but it was always, always there. Hovering. The pull of it getting stronger and stronger with the changing of the seasons. It was the one thing that made autumn her least favorite time of the year. If it hadn’t been for that, autumn would have been her favorite. The crispness in the air, the rainbow in the leaves, the pumpkins and apple cider and warm woolen sweaters. Everything about it was beautiful. And yet, there in the middle of all that beauty, this yearly reminder sat there like a bloated toad. Someone who should have been there wasn’t.

That might have been part of the reason the Black Vinyard Brigade had decided to go on tour, Becca mused as she passed by Charlie’s empty room, the first one next to the stairs. He’d always been a boy on the move, out of Summerview more than in. But even with that, he’d seemed particularly antsy of late, and it wasn’t as if the BVB was famous. Yet. She smiled to herself and continued on her way to her own bedroom just down the hall. They’d be famous eventually. They had the talent for it, and Charlie had the luck. They’d play just the right gig, have just the right record executive in the audience, sign just the right deal, and soon enough he’d be calling with good news.

The family rooms, unlike the guest rooms, didn’t have individual baths attached. Instead, the attic floor shared one communal bathroom in the apex where the east wing joined the south hall. Becca made her way there first. She needed a shower, and frankly, a cold one.

The water was brisk and biting against her skin, and she savored it as she washed and scrubbed the day away. The scent of her pine fresh bodywash filled the room almost immediately as she opened the bottle, and even after her shower, when she made her way back to her bedroom, that aroma followed. She’d chosen this wash specifically for that enduring quality. This, too, was another way in which Becca gathered the things she loved. Kept them close. Maybe, if she stopped and thought about it, psychologically there was an underlying reason. But then again, she wasn’t one to let herself think that deeply. Not when it might end up hurting her. It was much better just to accept things as they were, especially when it came to life’s little pleasures.

As she ran a comb through her damp hair, she looked down from her triangular window into the parking lot below. There was Mr. Winslow, putting his luggage in the back of his truck. It wasn’t quite half past eight yet, but some people did like their early checkouts. Breakfast was only complimentary, not mandatory, after all, and there was no time requirement on the length of time spent at it. Who could say he didn’t already have a bagel and a cup of coffee? Whatever he’d decided to do this morning, Mr. Winslow seemed happy and awake enough as he climbed into the cab and pulled out of his spot.

That left a full view of that old car James Morrison had arrived in. Last night, the heavy rains had obscured the view somewhat. Now, with nothing but a thin pane of glass between her and it, she could appreciate it fully. She’d been right, she realized with a light electric thrill, it was absolutely cared for. It looked like it was on its way to a car show, with its beautiful jet-black paint job. Shining chrome. Not a speck of rust to be seen. She wondered just how old it was. Seventies, she guessed. Eighties would be pushing it.

Maybe he was a collector. She thought back, trying to reconcile that possible identity with his outfit, his bearing, his voice – and bit the inside of her cheek. She really was going to have to stop doing that.

Stubbornly she drew her heavy curtains across the window, shutting out the sun, the parking lot, and all thoughts of James Morrison. She turned away from the window and walked away. Sitting at her dressing table mirror, she braided her hair into two quick plaits, and wrapped them up under a bandana, before she got up and into her nightgown. It was getting late for her, and she could feel fatigue setting in despite… despite whatever else it was she was feeling.

She climbed under her comforter, rested her head on her pillow, and shut her eyes. She was warm, and she was comfortable, and she could feel herself drifting off into peaceful slumber.

A howl had her sitting bolt upright. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she carefully stood up. It took her a second to register her surroundings. She was in the garden out back. How…? 

She spun around as another howl erupted from the Inn behind her. The windows of Summerview all stared down darkly at her, all but one on the lower floor. 

But the light coming from it wasn’t that bright artificial sort that would have come from the overhead lamp. It was unlike any she’d ever seen. It was fire engine red, and deep-sea purple, and somehow also tornado green, all at the same time.

Becca wanted to move toward it, but her feet seemed rooted to the spot. She looked down, and she saw a pair of dark pink lilies growing where her feet should have been. She could only watch as those colors emanating from the window shifted, brightening and dimming, almost writhing. The howls were coming faster now, each one stronger and filled with more anguish than seemed humanly possible.

Then, somewhere muffled in the depths of that palpitating hell, she heard a woman’s voice call out. It was too muffled at first to hear clearly, but it repeated, each time becoming clearer, until finally, “I’m sorry, Kentucky! I’m so, so sorry!” In an instant, Becca realized that was the panicked voice of Mrs. Kettleman, and in that same instant, she numbered that window. It was the window to room eight.

With a burst of fury, Becca ripped her feet from the ground. Flowers and earth went flying in a wide, chaotic arc, coating her skin and her face and her hair with grit, but she hardly noticed as she sprinted toward the window. The ground slid beneath her, but she kept going, she kept running, she kept---

She yelped when her back hit the floor. She lay there for a second, stunned, staring up at her ceiling. Her pulse was racing, her skin felt too tight, her mouth was completely dry, and she was inches from crying.

She dragged herself into a sitting position but couldn’t quite yet bring herself to stop shaking. What a nightmare. She hadn’t had one that bad in… she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had one that bad. She hugged her knees and forced herself to take in several deep breaths. The oxygen made her start feeling better. Still, she absolutely knew she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep without rehydrating.

She used the bed to pull herself up, then gathered her fallen bedclothes onto the bed. She grabbed a pullover dress from her closet and yanked it on over her nightgown. It bunched a little funny, but she was only running to the kitchens for a glass of juice.

Although, she thought as she shut her bedroom door behind her, at the moment, what she really wanted was a good shot of vodka.


	4. The Surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca calms down after her nightmare with a quiet conversation in the kitchens, but finds more than she expected when she returns to the attic.

As Becca exited the stairwell onto the ground floor, she realized it was later than she’d expected. The sunlight streaming into the lobby was midday bright, and her tired eyes narrowed instinctively against the glare.

Mother looked up from the front desk in surprise at Becca’s approach. “Oh, honey,” she said, “what are you doing up?”

Becca felt the sudden childish impulse to run over to her mom and tell her all about the nightmare. Mother would have understood. But the desire to behave like an adult overcame that impulse. Then again, maybe it was the desire to forget it and pretend it never happened. Either way, Becca answered with a simple “I woke up thirsty, so I’m going to get some apple juice.” She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Wow,” she said, “afternoon already?”

“It sure is,” Mother replied. “Oh, Mrs. Kettleman’s checked in. I think she’s out in the gardens, if you wanted to say hello before you head back upstairs.”

“I’ll do that.” Becca started to walk toward the kitchens again, then hesitated. “I…”

Mother gave her a quirk of an eyebrow but waited patiently for her to continue.

It was a difficult balance to walk, to get the answer to the specific question she wanted to ask without actually saying that question aloud. “Any other changes since I’ve been out?” Becca bit the inside of her cheek. Was she being subtle enough? Not subtle enough? 

Thankfully, Mother seemed to accept it as a perfectly innocent inquiry. “Well, Mr. Winslow checked out this morning, just after you went to sleep. He said to say thank you, to everyone including you, of course, and he set up another reservation with us for the fishing tournament next April. He’s such a sweet old man.”

“You know,” Becca leaned in conspiratorially, “he has a crush on you.”

“Oh, Becca.” Mother shook her head, but a tiny smile played about her lips.

“I’m serious! You should ask him out to dinner.”

“He won’t be back until next year,” Mother said with an almost imperceptible sigh. “And furthermore, that would be breaking our rules, wouldn’t it? I’d hardly be setting a good example for you and your brother.”

“It’s only bending the rules a little,” Becca said much too quickly, and although she had tried to keep the eagerness out of her voice, it was definitely there. She slowed down and tried again. “I mean, having a real connection with someone, that should count for something, shouldn’t it? You could be friends at least.”

“Hmm,” Mother said. Becca could tell she hadn’t won her over completely, but at least she hadn’t said an outright no. “Go on and get yourself that drink. Then you get yourself back up to bed. You look like you could use a good forty winks.”

“And then some,” Becca sighed. “All right. I’ll see you later, Mother.”

She gave her mother a tiny wave of farewell and then continued on through the vacant dining room and into the kitchens. Meg was standing by the sinks, doing the dishes from breakfast. She didn’t notice Becca’s arrival at first. Meg had the radio playing, and she was singing along, loudly and off-key. Becca loved Meg’s voice. She wasn’t good, but she was confident. Considering her accent (she’d emigrated from the UK), she sounded a little bit like Adele, if Adele hadn’t been able to carry a tune.

“Hey, Meg,” Becca said as she crossed over to the beverage refrigerator. “How are you today?”

Meg startled a bit, almost dropping the dish she was rinsing down into the sink. When she turned, she was cackling with laughter. “Other than the heart in my throat, can’t complain.” She paused and gave Becca the strangest look.

Becca looked down at herself and saw that her nightgown had bunched the dress up against her thigh and created a thick roll along her waist toward the small of her back. She smoothed at the fabric with her palm. With some fighting, she’d managed to have it looking somewhat normal. “I didn’t feel like getting fully dressed just to go back to bed.”

“Fair. What are you doing up, by the by?”

“No good reason,” Becca said as she pulled a carton of apple juice from the fridge. “I had one hell of a nightmare.”

“Ooh, really? Wanna talk about it?” Meg’s dark brown eyes glittered with curiosity, and before Becca had even answered the question, she’d put the dish down in the sink and turned the radio down to give her full attention.

Becca got a glass from the cupboard and poured herself a cup. She replaced the carton in the refrigerator and sat down at the kitchen table. As she sipped at the juice, she described the dream as best she could remember it. The details were a bit fuzzy now that she’d been out and about. But she could remember how she’d felt being trapped, and hearing Mrs. Kettleman in trouble. “Have you seen Mrs. K yet?” she asked when she’d finished.

“Sure,” Meg replied. “She’s lovely.” She stepped away from the sink and took a seat at the table across from Becca. “D’ya remember what happened in South Africa at the World Cup?”

“The World Cup?”

Meg rolled her eyes. “It’s only the world championship football match, is all. But then again, y’ don’t watch much football.”

“Sure don’t,” Becca replied. “Especially since we call it soccer here.”

“Just like an American.” Meg grinned as she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Gotta do things differently from every other country in the world. Y’ do know everyone else calls it football?”

“Yeah, yeah, well, you can keep your metric systems and your Celsius temperatures,” Becca said with a lighthearted dismissive wave. “How did we get here?”

“The World Cup,” Meg repeated, “in 2010, all that business with the vuvuzelas? Remember any of that?”

“Nope.”

“Blooming useless, y’ are,” Meg laughed. “I can’t rightly talk about the bag of vuvuzelas Mrs. K has with her if y’ don’t know what they are. But that’s what I meant to say, is she’s got a great big bag stuffed with vuvuzelas. She’s planning to hand them out to her grand-nephew’s twins. Y’ shoulda heard her, the old wonder, telling us all about her diabolical plan. If I have to put up with them, she says, they’ll have to put up with me.” Meg laughed again. “Lord love her.”

“Vuvuzelas are… annoying, then, I gather?”

Meg scrunched up her nose, lifted a hand to her mouth, and made a sound like an asthmatic kazoo. “That,” she said. “Constantly that. Banned them at the matches after Johannesburg. Good riddance, I say. Here I am, not ten years old, sitting with my ear practically inside the radio, aching to hear what’s happening with the boys from Tottenham - I was in love with more than a few of them, I’ll tell y’ that, for all that they were too old for me - and I can barely hear a thing for all the buzzing. Apparently, the judges agreed with me, since, like I say, the vuvuzela’s been banned.” Meg stood up and arched her back. “Well, I should get myself back to it, I suppose. And somebody else best get back to bed, or she’ll be useless come this afternoon.”

“That’s almost literally word for word what Mother said.” Becca downed the last of her apple juice. “You do know I’m older than you? By quite a few years?”

“And just what’s age got to do with it? I happen to be a very grown up, mature lady.” Meg made a rude sound with her mouth.

Becca laughed and stood up from the table. “I can’t argue with that.”

“Hand that over,” Meg said, not waiting for Becca to do it before reaching over and taking the empty glass from her hand. “Might as well add it to the pile.”

“Thanks,” Becca said, honestly grateful. “And thanks for talking to me, too. I feel better now, especially knowing that Mrs. K is doing okay.”

“She’s aces,” Meg replied as she dunked the glass under the sudsy water. “Y’ only had a nightmare. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

“I won’t. Thank you! Have a good day.”

Becca left the kitchen to the sound of Meg turning the radio back up and immediately start singing along again. She smiled, feeling immensely glad they’d hired Meg on. They’d needed the extra hands when Charlie left, and Meg had been the best interview they’d had. Her playful, youthful personality fit right in at Summerview.

When Becca stepped out onto the back patio, she didn’t see Mrs. Kettleman in the gardens. She must’ve taken too long getting that apple juice. She yawned then, heavily, and gave herself a little shrug to shake off her fatigue. It was fine if she didn’t catch up to her just yet. She’d see Mrs. Kettleman that afternoon.

As she passed the second floor, she could hear someone’s television set playing down the hall. It was perhaps a bit too loud, but it was only the afternoon. The Inn’s quiet hours didn’t start until eight in the evening. She made a mental note to keep that hallway in mind when nightfall came around but didn’t bother to stop on her way to the family’s rooms upstairs.

As she turned the corner into her own hallway, the yawn she was in the middle of stifling turned into a strangled yelp. Someone was here, and no one should have been. The sound she’d made was loud enough that the man turned toward her, and as she saw his face, she took a startled step backward.

“You!” was all she could manage to say.


	5. The Invitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James has decided to extend his stay at the Inn and surprises Becca with an unexpected invitation.

James Morrison looked just as startled as Becca Norwood felt. But when his eyes met hers, his surprise shifted smoothly into an easy smile and his shoulders relaxed. The man was absolutely dripping with charm. That wasn’t trustworthy, she thought to herself as she scrutinized him, not at all. “Hey there,” he said. The way he said it, too! That tone of friendship and nonchalance. The impertinence had Becca bristling. As if he thought he had a right to be here. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What are you doing up here?” The authority in her voice didn’t come out as strongly as she’d hoped it would, especially with that uneasy crack in between the two syllables of the word doing.

“These old buildings,” he said, looking delicately up to the ceiling as if inspecting the area. “Complicated layouts. You couldn’t help me find room seventeen, could you?”

That was an obvious lie, and not even a good one. The Inn only had three floors, and the difference between the guest halls and the family area was fairly significant. The carpeting, for one, there was none up here, and he couldn’t have missed the obvious lack of lighting along the attic walls. And then the decorations – there was absolutely no way he’d failed to recognize the difference between tasteful ambiguity and familial significance. There were baby and wedding and graduation photos along the walls on this floor, for fuck’s sake. “What are you doing up here?” she repeated. Then her eyes widened. “What are you doing here at all? Checkout was at eleven.”

He looked back at her and grinned, and damn it if her toes didn’t clench up again. That was getting to be annoying. She shouldn’t be turned on. She should be genuinely disturbed. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He could have been dangerous to her. He WAS dangerous to her. She knew that well enough. And yet, her goddamn traitorous hormones were sending a completely different message.

“Lucky me, the room was still available. I think I’m gonna hang out here a while. I’ve got some time to kill before I’ve gotta be anywhere. Besides,” he said. His voice lowered as he took half a step forward. “Maybe I don’t feel like leaving just yet.”

Oh, absolutely not. Becca took half a step backward. “Thank you for your patronage,” she said tersely, “but guests aren’t allowed up here. Please go back downstairs now.”

He looked as if he was going to say something but stopped short. His eyes flitted up to the top of her head, and she realized with a burst of embarrassment that she was still wearing the bandana over her braids. Unconsciously she lifted a hand up to her hair, and then stubbornly lowered it again when she realized what she’d done.

“These are our rooms,” she said angrily, feeling her embarrassment fueling the flames, and she repeated, “You’re not allowed up here.”

“Oh,” he said calmly. “Right. Sorry. I’ll go back downstairs.”

He turned, and started to walk toward the stairs, but then he paused. “Stop me if I’m overstepping, but I have an idea.” He leaned one shoulder against the wall and crossed his left ankle over his right. Very casual, very sexy, very infuriating. Becca’s jaw clenched but she didn’t interrupt him. Despite herself, she wanted to know where this was going. She didn’t have to wait long. “What say you and me ditch this place and go get a beer?”

She was immediately flustered, and she hated herself for it. She could barely manage to stammer out a reply. “Thank you, but I should, I would, I mean---”

“You’ve worked here long enough to know where we can find a good bar, am I right?”

“Well, yes, but---”

“It’s settled then,” he said, with another slow grin that set her pulse racing. “Change out of that nightgown and meet me downstairs.”

“I can’t. I literally can’t, I’m sorry.” Becca took a deep, settling breath. “You’re a guest, and it wouldn’t be proper.” Then, as the silence settled in between them, she recognized that he’d actually said the word nightgown.

She looked down at herself, terrified of what she’d see. It was even more embarrassing than her hair. Climbing back up the stairs, her dress had hitched itself little by little up over her nightgown. The overlaying fabric had caught on itself above her knees, and everything beneath the bunched up hem of her dress was… a low groan escaped her throat. Why did fate hate her so much? Why couldn’t she have chosen a sexier nightgown today? Why’d she have to go with the rainbow polka dots? 

She looked back up at him, mortified. There was a glimmer of mirth in those bright green eyes, and she felt a chill of shame run down her entire spine. “Would you go back downstairs already,” she asked as she angrily wrenched the hem of her dress back into place.

When she stood straight again, she gasped in surprise. He’d moved, in that instant she’d been looking away, swiftly and silently and alarmingly, and he was standing right in front of her. With that grin. And those eyes. And god help her, those lips.

“Meet me downstairs,” he repeated, and oh good lord in heaven, he was close enough she could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin.

Before she even knew what she was saying, she’d said yes. The word literally came out of her mouth unbidden. She bit her lip and took two deliberate steps backward. “Only for one drink. And only for a few minutes. I’m supposed to be asleep. And I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

“You’re the boss, Becca.” He turned and sauntered toward the stairs, and then he was gone.

For a minute she stood there in silence. What had she said? What had she just agreed to do? What was she going to do? What was Mother going to say?

Mother. Oh god.

Becca rushed into her room and whipped both the dress and the nightgown off over her head in one forceful yank. She tossed them carelessly onto her bed and dove into her closet. Panic and guilt and worries about what would Mother think tossed and jumbled about with questions of what skirt would match which top, whether she should wear jeans or a dress, whether she wanted to just go back to sleep and leave him hanging.

No, she groaned as she grabbed a pair of black pants and pulled them on. She didn’t want to leave him hanging, but she didn’t want to be too inviting. She could bend the rule, but she absolutely could not allow herself to break it. She just needed to dress casually, friendly, and keep everything slow and low key.

To that end, she grabbed one of her cable knit sweaters. There, she thought as she looked at herself in the mirror. The cream-colored wool matched her skin tone nicely and paired well with the pants she’d chosen. That should do it. She looked nice, but not sexy. Exactly the message she intended to convey.

Even if maybe she wished it didn’t have to be that way. She sighed.

She untied her bandana and let down her hair. She ran her brush through it with a few quick strokes, just enough to make it tidy without losing the loose waves the braids had created. When she’d finished, she took one last look at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t in the habit of wearing makeup daily, and she wondered if putting something on would be detrimental to what she was trying to do. She thought about it for a second and decided a little bit of lipstick couldn’t hurt. She went over her options – mostly dark pinks, although she did have that one really good red. Red looked good on her. She reached for it but stopped herself immediately. No, red was a step too far. Lipstick itself was a step too far for today. Pink lip gloss would do just fine.

Maybe not what she really wanted, deep down, but fine. Nice. Responsible.

When she was satisfied with her efforts, she left her room and made her way down the stairs. Although there was always a slight chance it wouldn’t be the case, Mother would most likely be at the desk, so Rebecca made the calculated decision to bypass the lobby altogether. She went out one of the side doors, the one in the eastern guest hallway.

It was a beautiful day when she stepped outside. That perfect kind of autumn day, when the warm sun and the cool air balanced each other just right. She hoped, deep in her heart, that maybe that was a good sign. This would be fine. She wouldn’t get in over her head. And maybe she wouldn’t upset Mother.

With that thought in mind, she walked swiftly out into the parking lot, keeping her back to the security camera. There was a chance, if Mother happened to see her on the monitor inside, that she might think Becca was Lisa Applebaum in room twelve. She and Becca were about the same height, and not too far from the same build, although Lisa had red hair – hopefully the difference between black and red didn’t come across as strongly when seen on a small black and white screen, and even more hopefully, maybe Mother wouldn’t be actively looking at the monitors when Becca passed by.

He was waiting by his car, leaning on the trunk. The expression on his face was somewhat tense at first, his lips a little thinned out, but when he saw her walking toward him, it softened immediately into a delighted smile. That, she thought in surprise, was the first truly honest thing she’d seen him do.

The balance between flattered and terrified matched the day perfectly, didn’t it.

Becca forced herself to breathe normally and give him a smile in return. “One drink,” she reminded him.

“One drink,” he repeated in agreement. 

She opened the passenger door and slid into the car. She noticed – with another thrill up her spine that was equal parts fright and excitement – that the passenger seat and the driver’s seat was the same seat. Not a lot of real estate between them.

As he sat down and shut his door, he looked over and saw her staring. “Okay,” he said with a grin. “Take us to the bar, Mr. Sulu.”

The reference made Becca smile, and she felt suddenly much more at ease. He was a dork. How dangerous could he really be?

“Just go north,” Becca told him. “The town’s only a few miles down the road.”

“You got it,” he said as he turned the ignition. The car roared to life, and as they pulled out of the parking lot, Becca suddenly realized she was staying awake during the day for the first time in five years.

Damn, James Morrison, she thought. You’d better be worth it.


	6. The Pub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The quiet drink at O'Reilly's Irish pub does not go as well as planned.

As they drove through the autumn landscape into town, Becca found herself unable to make conversation other than giving directions as needed. She chided herself for being so ill at ease. He was just a man, after all. Men weren’t really all that much to get that worked up about. She’d had conversations with them before. She’d had dates with them before. She’d even slept with a few of them. She had absolutely no reason to be this nervous now, she told herself that repeatedly. But with this one in particular… 

She couldn’t stop herself from peeking at him from her peripherals. God, he had a good profile. Strong jawline, beautiful nose, surprisingly long eyelashes. In the sunlight, his freckles stood out more strongly than they had when he’d been inside the Inn. Taken all together, his features had a bit of a weathered look, as if he hadn’t had the easiest go of it. And then again, there were those eyes.

Just as she glanced up at him, they turned toward her. The sudden eye contact sent a thrill of electricity through her lungs and she reacted unconsciously with a sharp intake of breath. He smiled then, a smug, self-satisfied sort of smile. Becca turned willfully away and raised a hand to gesture at the road ahead.

“Turn left up here.”

“You got it,” he said, and there was laughter in his tone, as if he was barely holding himself back. “This is a nice town,” he said as he pulled into traffic on Main Street. “You lived here long?”

“I’ve never lived in town,” she replied. “But you’re right, Middleton is very nice. And the people here are very nice, too. I have a lot of friends here.”

“So where are you from?” he asked.

She shook her head but interrupted her own response to raise her hand again to point. “That parking lot over there, by the Irish flags.”

He turned smoothly into the parking lot and slid into a spot in front of O’Reilly’s. As he put the car into park and killed the engine, he turned to her. “You don’t wanna tell me where you’re from?”

“No,” she said. She grimaced, and stammered, “I mean, that’s not what I mean, I’m from here. I’ve just never lived in town.”

She lowered her gaze and clambered out of the car. It wasn’t as graceful an exit as she would have liked it to have been, but at least giving herself a little bit of space alleviated some of the awkwardness.

O’Reilly’s wasn’t very busy. It was, after all, barely past noon on a weekday. As she walked into the main room, Becca counted only three customers in total. 

“So what’s the deal here,” James asked her. “Do we wait for a table or is this a seat yourself kind of thing?”

Becca waved at Doug who was standing behind the bar. He stopped filling a beer from the tap and gave her a wide, happy smile. "Hey there, darlin'," he called over to her. "Just sit yourself down any old where." 

“It’s mostly a seat yourself kind of thing,” Becca answered James. “I like to get Doug’s okay though.”

She walked over to a booth off to the side, in a section a little bit away from the other patrons. Sliding onto the seat, she wondered idly if the sweater had been a bad choice. It was nice to have when outside, but inside – and feeling what kind of way she was feeling – maybe it would prove to be a problem.

“He one of your friends in town?” James asked as he sat down across from her. “Doug?”

“One of my best friends,” Becca answered. “We went to high school together.”

His head tilted almost imperceptibly to one side. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’ve always lived here. And you went to school here. But you’ve never lived here?”

“It’s not---” Becca cut herself off as Doug came over to the booth.

“Hey, y’all,” Doug said. He’d moved up from Texas years ago, but he’d never once lost that twang. Becca loved his accent almost more than she loved Meg’s. “What can I getcha?” He turned to James. “Less you’d like a menu?”

“I’ll have a burger and a beer. Whatever’s on tap’s fine.”

Was it just her imagination, or was his tone a little bit brittle again? Becca shook that thought away and smiled at Doug. “I’ll have the same.”

“Sure thing,” Doug replied, “Be right back.” He went off to give their order to the kitchen.

Becca looked over at James to find he was studying her face. She blinked in surprise, and that intensity disappeared. She’d almost think she’d imagined it, for how quickly his expression changed. He really was good at lying, wasn’t he. Another cover up, another subtle little lie. She’d have to watch him. She’d have to watch herself.

“You were saying,” he said, casually.

“Well,” Becca answered. “It’s not a big mystery, I promise. This is practically my hometown, because I went to school here and all these people are my neighbors, but I live up at Summerview. I’ve always lived at the Inn. Even when I went to college, I just made the hour round trip back and forth.”

“Oh,” he said, slowly, digesting the new information. “You don’t just work for them?”

“I am them,” Becca said with a little laugh. “I guess we haven’t properly introduced ourselves, have we?” She held out her hand. “Rebecca Norwood. My family owns Summerview Inn. Pleased to meet you.”

The grin he gave her as he accepted the handshake was almost sinful. “Pleased to meet you, Rebecca.” He paused when their hands met, and he ran his thumb over the back of her hand. As their eyes met, she saw something in them that she couldn’t quite define. What was that? Scrutiny? Curiosity? Fear? It was odd, truly odd, the expression he was giving her just now. “Hey,” he said softly. “Why don’t you call me Dean?”

“Dean?” Her voice cracked a little and she clenched her teeth. For fuck’s sake, she thought. Why the hell couldn’t she hold herself together around this man?

“That’s, uh.” With one more lingering caress of her hand, he let go and pulled away. “That’s what my friends call me.”

“Why? If you don’t mind me asking, I mean.”

“It’s my name,” he answered instantly, and then he said, “My middle name, I mean. James Dean Morrison.”

Now why did he seem like he was covering something up again? Maybe it was embarrassment, she thought to herself. It was kind of an embarrassing name.

“Your parents were fans?”

“You could say that.”

“Well, all right then. It’s nice to officially meet you, Dean.”

He lowered his head, hiding his gentle smile when she said his name. It was cute. Kind of shy. He didn’t seem the type who would have a problem with shyness, but there it was. They fell into a companionable silence, and Becca began to wonder why she’d been afraid of this man. 

Then Doug came back with their burgers and beers, and she remembered.

How quickly his face could change. Those eyes. Those brilliant green heartbreakingly sharp eyes. He clearly had some sort of a problem with Doug. Doug hadn’t done anything to merit that. Unless Dean had some sort of prejudice against southerners.

“Lemme know if there’s anythin' else I can get y’all,” Doug said as he set their orders down on the table. “I’ll just be over yonder at the bar.”

“Thanks, Doug,” Becca told him.

Doug gave her a smile in farewell, but that smile trailed off his face when he looked over at Dean and noticed the intensity with which he was being scrutinized. “Bon appetit,” he said, pure professionalism.

When he walked away, Becca took the opportunity to bite into her burger. With a full mouth, she wouldn’t feel compelled to keep up a conversation. Not just yet – she could give herself some time to think. The patty was perfectly cooked, as usual. O’Reilly’s made a damn fine burger.

Dean clearly agreed, from the moan that came from his throat. “Ommmgod,” he said around a mouthful of burger. He looked over at her and pointed the finger on one hand to the burger in his other. “That’s amazing.”

Becca nodded and swallowed her bite. “They make the best one in town. I think it’s the bun.”

“It’s a real good bun,” Dean agreed and took another bite. “Buttery.”

“What about you,” Becca asked. She lifted her pint. “Have you always lived in California?”

“Nah,” he answered. “I’ve never lived in one place for long. I couldn’t even start to think about what it might be like living in the same house for my whole life. Especially not a place like your Inn. Boy, that’s a great building. Old.”

“Definitely old. It was built in the nineteenth century.”

“Wow.” He took a swig of his beer and lowered the mug back to the table. “Any good ghost stories?”

Becca laughed. “Ghost stories. No.”

“Really? A place as old as that? No ghost stories? Nothing weird ever happen, cold spots, electrical problems?”

“Well, yeah, we have cold spots and electrical problems sometimes. But that’s just because it’s an old building. And we try to stay on top of it as much as we can, just because, you know, we’re a working Inn.”

“You really never noticed anything out of the ordinary?”

“Sorry to disappoint,” she laughed again. “It might seem like the perfect setting for a haunting, but I’ve never experienced anything personally.”

“Huh,” he said. He seemed to be mulling something over, and it didn’t just seem like the disappointment of a ghost buff denied an intriguing story. “How old are you?”

She leaned away from him into the cushion behind her, taken aback by the question. “What? Why?”

“Just wondering how long you hadn’t noticed anything.”

There was something in his words, something he was definitely not saying. Becca could feel herself getting frustrated with him again. “How old are you?”

“I asked you first.”

“Yeah. Well. I’m not answering that.” Becca put down her burger and stood up from the booth. From the stunned look those impossibly green eyes gave her, she’d caught him by surprise. Good. “Thanks for this. It’s been fun.”

She turned, striding away from the booth before he could say anything. How rude he was, and why did he have to LIE all the time? Granted, they’d only just met, and she wasn’t entitled to his entire life story, but still. There wasn’t any reason to avoid things, especially not when the conversations weren’t even that deep. And yet here he was, holding things back almost every time he spoke. And she was staying up for this? This day had been a real waste of time. She hadn’t even really wanted to come! No, she sighed inwardly, she was lying to herself now. She had wanted to come. She had hoped for… Something better.

Doug looked up as she approached the bar. “Hey there, Becca,” he said. “Everythin' all right?”

“Could you give me a ride back to the Inn? I can get a taxi if---”

“Course I can,” he said, putting down the rag he was holding. He turned toward the kitchens and yelled out, “Hey, Pete, I’m goin' on break!” As he took off his apron, he asked, “You have a fight with your friend?”

“He’s not my friend,” Becca said stubbornly.

When she turned to go to the door, she saw that the booth was empty. A few bills had been tucked under Dean’s half-empty mug, and the burger was gone. She muttered under her breath. She’d left him first. Why was she upset about him leaving her? She really didn’t have the room to be.

She followed Doug to his truck in the parking lot, and sure enough, Dean’s black classic was gone. What had she expected? That he’d be waiting for her? That he’d apologize? He didn’t honestly have that much to apologize for. They didn’t know each other. They owed nothing to each other beyond basic human kindness.

Damn it all. He’d gotten under her skin. She sighed again as she climbed into the cab of Doug’s truck. 

What a mess she’d made of things.


	7. The Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friendly conversations with Doug Bennett and Mrs. Kettleman put Becca at ease - and then tragedy strikes.

The start of the drive out of town was made in silence, as Doug could sense Becca’s mood, and he was deliberately giving her space. She liked that about him. Doug wasn’t pushy. Doug wasn’t frustrating. Doug wasn’t hard to be around.

Doug had never made her toes clench.

Becca sighed. She shifted in her seat to look at him. His eyes, a rich dark brown that bordered on black, were focused on the road ahead. He’d grown his beard in again over the summer, keeping it trimmed short and neat, and it framed his oval face in a very becoming way. He had strong, wide shoulders, and his arms were slender but toned, the aftereffects of being a baseball player. His nose was a little crooked, from where he’d broken it during that game between the Middleton Cyclones and the Fairview Tigers. A fastball to the face’ll do that to you – but it suited him, she thought. It gave his profile a uniqueness that drew the eye and kept it there, and the longer you looked, the more there was to appreciate. He was, altogether, a very handsome man. And besides all that, he was a genuinely good guy. Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with him?

The opportunity had been there, she had to admit. They’d been friends in high school. He hadn’t been her absolutely best friend – that was Kendra McCormick, who’d gone to Boston after graduation. But Doug had been her best guy friend. They’d clicked almost the instant he’d moved with his family into town. Hanging out after school, helping each other study, going to movies together. 

They’d even gone to their senior dance together. Of course, that hadn’t been a date, exactly. If Misty Tomlinson had accepted Doug’s invitation, instead of throwing him over for Scott Perdue (who had a motorcycle), Doug would have gone with her and Becca would have ended up going by herself. But Doug had his heart broken and he’d decided to skip the dance altogether. 

Becca had talked him out of that. There was no way she was going to let someone as good as Doug Bennett be miserable and alone, not when there was an obvious solution. Dress to the nines, turn up, and to hell with Misty. That turned out to be the best decision she ever made in high school. Quite possibly the best decision she’d ever made period. She’d laughed and danced more in that one evening than she’d ever done since.

But, in the end, with one thing or another, that friendship never quite bloomed into anything more serious. Neither of them had ever taken that final step forward. Still, she loved him, and she was incredibly grateful to have him in her life.

“Penny for ‘em,” Doug said, interrupting her thoughts and giving her a gentle sideways smile.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said as she returned a smile in kind. “I was just thinking. Have you ever noticed how people never say what they mean?”

“Sure do,” he replied. “Folks doubletalk all the time. Regular folks, too, not just the lyin’ ones, though lord knows they’re the worst of ‘em. My line of work, you get to be pretty good at sussin’ ‘em out.” He turned his head to look at her. “You get to be pretty good at tellin’ when somebody needs to talk things out, too. Let’s hear it, darlin’. I got nothin’ but time.”

“I guess…” Becca paused and bit the side of her mouth. “I guess I just wish I knew what I was doing.” She sighed and looked back at the road ahead. “Sometimes I do things without thinking first. Or… I guess it’s really that I do too much thinking, but it all comes to nothing because I do things anyway. One thing happens and then another happens and it’s all just a great big modern mess. Am I making any sense?”

“Plenty,” Doug said. As the conversation lapsed into silence once more, the sound of the road beneath the rolling tires filled the air with a pleasant, steady rumble, and Becca started to feel comfortable again. He understood where she was coming from. She was making sense. And making sense meant she wasn’t wrong. It was a relief to hear it.

Doug pulled his truck into the parking lot at Summerview, and Becca found herself oddly disappointed when there was no old black four door among the other vehicles parked there. Her face must have showed it, because Doug slowed to a stop and turned to her, resting his left hand on top of the steering wheel.

“If you ever get to needin' to talk to someone,” he said, “you just remember you have my number, darlin’.”

“You’re the best, Doug.” Becca leaned forward and hugged him. For a second there, she enjoyed the feeling of being embraced. And if, for a second there, she wondered in the back of her mind what it would feel like to be held like this by someone else, she absolutely and firmly denied that thought. “And seriously, thank you for the ride. You’re a lifesaver.”

“Any time. I mean that.”

“I know you do.” She patted his back, gave him one long squeeze, then hopped out of his truck and shut the door. She turned and started the short walk back toward the Inn.

“Hey, darlin’,” Doug called out to her. She turned to see him leaning toward her out of his window as the truck rolled slowly away. “Ain’t nobody got a real good handle on the future. Just take life as it comes. You’re doin’ fine.”

She waved goodbye as he circled the truck around and exited the parking lot. She watched Doug disappear down the road and let her gratitude wash over her, feeling like the world was good, people were kind, and things would turn out all right in the end.

With her thoughts nowhere near capable of planning three steps ahead at the moment, she walked directly into the front lobby instead of going back in the way she’d come out. That, it turned out, was immediately a mistake.

“Becca?” Her mother was standing over beside the couches in the lobby in conversation with one of the guests.

Fortunately, Becca didn’t have time to respond, before “Oh my goodness, is that Becca?” came from the figure seated there. She stood, and before she’d even turned around, Becca knew it was Mrs. Kettleman.

“Becca, sweetheart, look at you!” Mrs. Kettleman made her way around the couch. She was steady on her feet, and her posture was ramrod straight, even at her septuagenarian age. She was just under five feet tall, but her hair – a classic silver beehive shocked through with streaks of white – added another several inches to her height. She adjusted her rose-tinted spectacles and peered up at Becca with blinky eyes. “You get more beautiful every year. Every day, I bet!”

“Mrs. K,” Becca said as she threw her arms around her. “It’s so good to see you! How was your drive?”

“Oh, can’t complain, can’t complain. Midwesterners can’t drive for beans but thank goodness I only have to pass through once a year to get here, and getting here is a blessing, goodness me yes, an absolute blessing. Can you stay and chat awhile? Now, don’t let me keep you. I know you’re not usually out and about just yet.”

“I really should try to get back to sleep,” Becca said ruefully. “I’ve been up and down all day.”

Over the top of Mrs. Kettleman’s hairdo, Becca could see her mother’s mouth twist in concern. Mother mouthed, are you okay? Becca nodded, and Mother relaxed a little in relief.

“Up and down all day, well, mercy me, that’s just no good at all.” Mrs. Kettleman took one of Becca’s arms in hers and gently guided her out of the lobby toward the stairwell. “I’d love to catch up with you right now, tell you all about my grandson’s wedding, my son’s retirement, I have another great-great on the way. Don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet, but they’ve already decided on Alex as the name. But I absolutely refuse to be selfish now, goodness me yes, because you need to take care of yourself. I’ll still be up and around when you wake up this evening, and we can talk all about it over supper.” She stopped at the base of the stairs and gave Becca a gentle nudge. “Up you get.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Becca gave Mrs. K another hug. “It’s so good to see you!” She knew she was repeating herself, but she didn’t care. Mrs. Kettleman was family.

“You too, Becca sweetheart,” Mrs. Kettleman said as she kissed Becca on her cheek. “I’ll see you tonight. Sleep well!”

Becca made her way up the stairs, feeling better than she’d felt all day. Everything was just as it should be, as it had been, as it would be to come. When she tucked herself back under her covers, it didn’t take her long before she fell into a deep and comfortable sleep. This time, she didn’t have any dreams – bad or good - that she would remember when she awoke. Everything was warmth, and darkness, and peace. She slept for hours, luxuriating in it.

The sudden, jarring juxtaposition of being wrapped in that heavenly, comfortable place, to waking up as she did to the red and blue lights flashing outside her window from the parking lot below, sent her heart down to the pit of her stomach.


	8. The Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summerview Inn absorbs the tragic loss of Mrs. Kettleman, and once again Becca finds Dean somewhere he shouldn't be.

Becca flung back her bedcovers and rushed over to her window. The parking lot was awash with activity. Guests – almost all of them, it seemed – were huddled in a group off to the left, watching over the situation like suspicious meerkats. Off to the edge of the parking lot, little Kimmy Frankel was crying, in loud, gulping sobs. Although Mrs. Frankel had picked the toddler up and was cooing and pacing and patting Kimmy’s back, the baby was still overwhelmed by everything. And Becca felt the exact same way, as she looked over the emergency response team. A couple of police cruisers were parked out front, and a fire truck, and an ambulance, and---

And a body bag.

Becca’s breath caught in her throat. She watched in wide-eyed shock as two paramedics guided a stretcher out through the lobby doors toward the open rear of the ambulance. Her hand flew to her mouth and she turned to run downstairs. 

She stopped herself at the door and forced herself to take the time to change – but she refused to waste it. She didn’t bother with underwear, nor did she lose any minutes on socks and shoes. Her pullover dress was enough.

She ran down the stairs, and only her years of navigating the building kept her feet from tripping over each other in her haste. Her mind reeled as she tried to recount that group of guests. The Frankels were all there. She’d seen Lisa Applebaum’s bright red hair. Both of the Latterly sisters, and Meg had been in the back, thank god. But it was useless. There’d been almost two dozen people in that group. She hadn’t stared long enough from her upstairs window to find out who was missing.

The Inn itself was eerily silent as she burst from the stairwell into the guest hallway on the ground floor. No conversations, no television sets, no radios, no anybody. Every single person was outside, she realized. Everyone but her.

She forced herself to slow down as she crossed through the lobby, even though every atom in her body was vibrating with anxiety. Mother. She’d find Mother, and then she’d find out what was happening.

Her hair flew into her face as she stepped outside. The wind had picked up in the few hours since she’d been asleep, and with that, the pleasant autumn chill had turned biting and cold. She shivered and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Mother, she thought again, and looked over at the gathered crowd.

From her place in the back, Meg’s eyes met Becca’s. In an instant Meg had rounded the crowd, her tight black curls bouncing as she dashed over. Becca had barely a second to register the tears covering Meg’s face before she was crushed in a desperate hug. “I can’t,” Meg sobbed. “I can’t.”

“Who is it,” Becca asked, dreading the answer.

“I can’t believe it.” Meg pulled away and wiped her face with her hands. She looked up and looked Becca directly in the eyes. “It’s Mrs. K.”

Becca’s knees shook beneath her. She reached out for support and found Meg’s arm already waiting for her. She couldn’t believe it either. Not Mrs. Kettleman. Not that energetic lovely old lady she’d only just spoken to a few hours before.

“Matt and David were so excited about seeing her tomorrow. Who’s gonna tell them? Who’s gonna tell her family?” Meg buried her face in her hands.

Becca took Meg up in another hug. “How did it happen?”

“I dunno, I really don’t,” Meg sobbed into Becca’s hair. “I made her a cuppa, and then we had a bit of a chinwag about her children, and her niece with the new fiancé, and how she had a great-great grandbaby coming, and then--- Her family’s waiting for her. Her family’s---” Her voice broke off into a stifled wail.

Becca’s throat was tight, so incredibly tight. She could barely think, and she could barely breathe. Everything was confusion. She looked over toward the emergency responders, and as she did, she finally saw Mother, standing off to one side talking to two police officers, one a short blond man and the other a tall brunette with her hair in a bun. There, at last, was a bit of clarity, a firm idea of what to do next. Talk to Mother. Mother would know what to do.

“I’ll call the boys,” Becca told Meg as she gently let her out of the hug. “Don’t worry about that. Go on back inside, out of this wind.”

“Thank y’, Becca,” Meg sniffled. “I’ll be aces in a bit, don’t y’ worry. I’ll just go inside and wash my face.”

Becca followed Meg as far as the main entrance and saw her safely inside. Then she turned and made her way toward Mother, where she and the police officers seemed to be wrapping things up.

“---pretty straightforward. But give us a call if there’s anything else,” said the officer as she finished writing something in a notebook and flipped it shut.

“Of course,” Mother said. “Thank you.” She looked up as the officers walked away and saw Becca coming toward her. “Oh, Becca, sweetheart.” Her voice was shaky, but she was somehow managing to hold back her tears. “I’m sorry. Mrs. Kettleman is gone.”

“Meg tried to talk to me about it, but I didn’t get much. She’s pretty broken up.”

“She was the…” Mother had to stop and clear her throat before she answered. “Meg was the one who found her.”

“Oh,” Becca said, suddenly incredibly proud of Meg’s being able to talk at all. “How did it happen?”

“She died peacefully. I can be thankful for that. But she…” Mother’s voice broke. The dam let loose, and tears began to trickle down her face. “She said she needed a nap.”

She went to sleep, and she didn’t wake up again.

Becca let out a sharp exhale and her hand went unconsciously up over her mouth. She was crying now, and she had absolutely no ability to stop it. “Mama,” she said as she flew into Mother’s open arms.

“It’s all right,” Mother said, stroking her hair. “It’s all right. Mrs. K wasn’t in pain. And she was happy. She was happy to be here with us. It’s all right.”

It wasn’t. It wasn’t all right. Becca knew that full well. Everything around her was wrong. Everyone around her was hurting. 

And then, breaking cleanly like a shaft of light through all that grief and anxiety, she heard a voice teeming with bridled frustration. “Where the hell is Wendy?” 

Becca looked up and wiped the tears from her eyes. The fire engine was already gone, and the police officers were driving away. The ambulance’s doors were closed, and ready to go, but hadn’t left yet. A paramedic and an EMT were standing behind the vehicle, impatiently scanning the parking lot.

“Maybe she’s still inside,” the paramedic said. “I’ll be right back.” Then he jogged past them into the building.

Becca let out a little chuckle. That had been enough to distract her back into functionality. “It’ll be all right,” she repeated back to her mother, and the surprising thing was, she was starting to feel like she could actually believe it herself. “Well. I’m awake now. And I don’t know about you, but I could use a hot chocolate.”

“That sounds about right,” Mother agreed. “See if Meg would like to join us. I’ll be right behind you. I’ve got to talk to the guests for a minute first.”

“Oh,” Becca suddenly remembered. “I told Meg I’d call David and Matt, too. To let them know.”

Mother sighed and nodded in agreement, and then walked over to where the crowd of guests was starting to drift back toward the Inn. Becca went inside to the telephone at the desk and dialed over to the Sanders house. David answered, and Becca told him as clearly and compassionately as she could gather herself to do. She could hear the anguish in his voice as he repeated the news to Matt, and she hung up the call, feeling horrible for being the bearer of bad news, but glad that Matt and David had each other to turn to for comfort.

They’d need to set up a memorial, Becca thought to herself as she made her way toward the kitchens. Just a nice little memorial to celebrate Mrs. Kellerman’s place in their lives. Tomorrow would be best. That would give her time to bake a German chocolate cake – that had always been Mrs. K’s favorite. And tomorrow everyone would be here, with Matt and David coming up for the weekly landscaping.

She’d need to make sure they had--- she stopped short just before she could push the swinging kitchen door open. Had that been… a giggle?

Yes, now that she was listening more intently, she could definitely hear giggling. At a time like this? She frowned, angry and hurt that anybody could find anything to giggle about now.

Then she heard a man’s low, seductive voice say, “That’s just the kind of guy I am. Can you blame me for being a little… curious?”

Another cascade of giggles bubbled through the door, and Becca’s anger flared. She shoved the door open with enough force that it slammed against the kitchen wall.

An auburn-haired paramedic, her face flushed pink with blush, turned like a startled deer toward the door with a loud “Oh!” And behind her, damn the man, Dean lifted his eyes up, slowly, casually, barely reacting to Becca’s entrance at all.

“This area is for employees only,” Becca said, folding her arms in front of her chest.

“I’m so sorry,” the paramedic gasped out. “I didn’t think… I should go.” She hurried over to the door, and Becca took a step into the kitchens to give her room to exit. But, as the paramedic reached the door, she paused and turned around. “Call me,” she told Dean, breathlessly.

“You’re the boss, Wendy.” Dean grinned at the paramedic, who giggled again as she went on her way.

Becca felt her eyebrows rise as her teeth clenched. That absolute son of a bitch. “Get out,” she said, and she pointed at the kitchen door. “You’re not allowed in here. And if I find you somewhere you’re not supposed to be, ANYWHERE you’re not supposed to be, ever again, I’m kicking you out. I’m not refunding you, and I’m going to blacklist your name, not just here at the Inn but at every hotel and motel for the next twenty miles. Do you understand me?”

Dean stared at her in silence for a second, working the muscles in his jaw. His perfect goddamn jaw. Becca widened her stance and raised her chin, daring him to defy her. He was thinking, she could see that. Something was formulating. Another lie. Another cover up. Another subtle little omission. “Well?” she finally asked him when she couldn’t bear it any longer.

“I understand you,” he said softly. He took a few hesitant steps forward, and she straightened her back unconsciously. “I understand you,” he repeated, “and I wish to god you understood me. But you don’t. And you won’t. And I’ve only got my own damn self to blame for it. So yes. Yes to everything you just said. Yes, I’m not allowed in the kitchen. Yes, you won’t find me where I don’t belong. And yes, Becca, I understand there will be consequences if you do.”

He paused when he reached her, staring down at her. That look in his eye wasn’t outright defiance, or even basic stubbornness. It was… oh my god, she thought. Was that regret?

And then he was gone.

Becca leaned against the kitchen wall and steadied her breath. She was angry, angrier than she’d ever been. Mrs. Kettleman had just died. And here he was, in Becca’s kitchen, laughing and flirting and flustering that baby-faced paramedic into giggles.

She drew herself up and marched back out of the kitchen toward the parking lot. She passed Mother on the way, who asked if anything was wrong, but Becca barely registered the question. Inwardly she was seething.

She burst back out into the light of day and scanned the parking lot. There it was. She glared at the shiny black car parked out of the way in the back of the lot. With everything going on, she hadn’t noticed he’d come back. Impulsively she strode over to his car, barely feeling the gravel crunch beneath her bare feet, and stopped short beside the driver’s side door. She glared at her reflection in its window. “Son of a bitch,” she said. “Son of a bitch,” she said again as she lifted her right foot and kicked the tire. 

Immediately she felt guilty. She hadn’t done any damage, but wow did she feel like a hypocrite. This wasn’t her property, just like the Inn wasn’t his. She sighed and walked back toward the Inn, looking down toward the ground.

Tomorrow, they’d have their memorial. They’d play Mrs. Kettleman’s favorite songs, and they’d eat her favorite foods, and they’d remember how happy she’d made them. And tomorrow… tomorrow would be a better day than this.


	9. The Conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca and Dean start to come to terms with one another.

The rest of the day felt sour and heavy. Normally Becca would have had the hours between four and seven to herself, free time she usually used to read or enjoy the gardens, but today she didn’t feel like doing anything. Instead, she sat on one of the couches in the lobby, soaking in the quiet comfort of just being near Mother while she worked at the desk.

What should have been an active afternoon was more than quiet – it was outright dour. The last sounds in the lobby had been Mother, making that call to talk to Charlie, and when she’d hung up the phone, everything had sunken into sullen silence. Even the Frankel kids, who would have been playing in the gardens at this hour, were nowhere to be seen. Although most of the guests couldn’t have been feeling the same level of grief as the inhabitants of the Inn, because they’d never known Mrs. Kettleman personally, the somberness of the events of the day had bled over into every soul in Summerview.

Becca’s grief was compounded by her increasing unease over how she’d handled the Dean situation. She hadn’t been wrong in being upset with him when she’d found him in the kitchens, just like she hadn’t been wrong when she’d yelled at him for finding him upstairs. He had been in the wrong there, unequivocally in the wrong.

But, she had to admit to herself, a lot of the anger she’d thrown at him in the kitchens was not altogether fair. She couldn’t help feeling guilty for that, or for deliberately going outside and attacking his car, which had been impulsive and out of line. There was no excuse to lose control of her actions just because Dean had her feeling some kind of way, and she really didn’t appreciate it. She had never, not once in her entire life, felt so ridiculously discombobulated for absolutely no reason. But her emotions were her own problem when it came down to it. Her jealousy was her own. And, after a good steady bit of contemplation, she could admit to herself, it was jealousy, plain and simple. 

It had made her angry to see him flirting, when he was flirting with someone that wasn’t her. And then! He’d called that paramedic the boss. That had really set her off. She didn’t have to think very hard on it to realize why that was. He’d said literally the same thing to her, word for absolute word, when he’d asked her out for that beer earlier this afternoon. 

Like it didn’t matter. Like she didn’t matter.

And again, she felt conflicted. It had only been one beer. It had barely been a date. She’d actively tried to make it as little of a date as possible. She hadn’t even let the not-quite-a-date end on a hopeful note. All things considered, she couldn’t blame him for moving on, considering the undeniable fact that she’d met him barely more than a day ago. Rationally, she knew she didn’t matter, and he shouldn’t have mattered to her. She didn’t know him from Adam. They’d had what amounted to three conversations, and not one of those conversations had been what you’d call soul-searching.

But then there was that look he’d given her before he left her in the kitchens. She bit the inside of her lip and leaned on the arm of the couch, resting her chin in her hand. He hadn’t been lying then, had he? He’d meant every bit of it. It seemed like there was something significant there.

But then why the hell had she caught him in there with that pretty paramedic?

She must have grumbled unconsciously, because Mother called gently over from the front desk, “What was that?”

Becca straightened up. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You could have fooled me,” Mother said, coming out from behind the desk and walking over to her. “You’ve been sitting here stewing for an hour now. Are you all right?”

Becca sighed as she stood up from the couch. “No,” she answered frankly. “But I will be.” I just have to do something first, she thought.

Mother took her up in a crushing hug. “Yes, you will,” she said. “You’re my strong baby girl.”

Becca laughed, despite herself. “Strong baby girl, huh?”

“Always and forever,” Mother said, swaying a little from side to side.

Becca sighed again, but this time it was more contentment than otherwise. “I’m so glad you’re my mother,” she said as they dropped the hug.

“I am too,” Mother answered. She took Becca by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes. “You are strong. You are capable. You are better than you know. Nothing will ever change that, no matter what.”

For some reason, instead of feeling comforted, Becca felt uneasy. “Are you all right too?”

Mother smiled at her and patted her shoulders. “Yes, I am. Thank you, sweetheart. I’ll be glad to see the sun rise tomorrow, is all.”

Mother went back to the desk, and Becca went toward the stairs, her thoughts formulating what it was exactly she intended to say when she got up to the second floor. She needed to apologize, or she’d never get rid of this sunken feeling in her stomach. But she’d absolutely not apologize for everything, not when she hadn’t been entirely in the wrong. She wasn’t sorry for what she’d said, only the way she’d said it – and ashamed for one of the reasons.

Reaching the junction where the second floor met the stairwell, she paused. That television was playing loudly again. It stood out starkly against the silence that had been pervasive through the rest of the Inn. As she ventured further into the hallway, she realized it was coming from room seventeen.

She walked up to the door and raised her hand to knock. But she paused, hearing a secondary sound beneath the mattress commercial.

“---over my head,” Dean was saying. “Where the hell are you?”

That was a phone call, and she was eavesdropping. Quickly she rapped her knuckles against the door to let him know she was there. “Hang on,” she heard him say. Then, three quick footsteps, and the door swung open.

His expression was blank, but from the heat still in his eyes, Becca could tell that he’d been fuming. His voice matched his emotionless features, even and relaxed as he asked her, “Can I help you?”

“I was hoping I could talk to you, if you had a minute.”

His eyebrows rose, almost imperceptibly, as he studied her for a second. “Sure,” he said. “Come on in.” He turned and lifted the cellphone in his hand to his ear. “I gotta go.” There was one short beat as the person on the other end said something, and then Dean responded, “No. We’re not to Poughkeepsie yet.” He clicked the flip phone shut with his left hand while he turned the television off with his right. “So,” he said as he turned. He sank down onto the chair by the table and crossed one leg squarely over the other. “What about?”

She entered the room, shutting the door behind her. “Look,” she said, and she paused to take a breath. How to phrase this. How to even start. “I don’t like feeling uneasy. And I especially don’t like feeling uneasy because it feels like someone’s not being honest.”

“Honest?” He rested his palms atop the calf crossing his lap, and god damn it, her toes clenched up again.

“Okay,” she said, biting her bottom lip unconsciously. “Yes. Honest. I’m uneasy because we’re not being honest with each other. I’m not asking you to tell me your whole life story. And I’m not planning on making you listen to mine. But I do want to clear the air a little, because this sitting on my emotions thing, it’s only making things worse.”

His left eyebrow rose, but he waited for her to continue. She crossed into the room and sat on the edge of his bed. She leaned forward with her hands on her knees.

“I need to apologize, first off,” she said. His vivid green eyes widened in surprise and she couldn’t help but smile at that. “I’m sorry for…” she let out a long, shaky breath, “reacting so strongly. You’re not supposed to be in the kitchens, and I think you know that.”

He let out a quiet chuckle. “I thought you were apologizing?”

“I’m getting to it,” she snapped, and she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. I don’t know why you think it’s funny. I don’t know why you act like you do. And I’m going to have to come to terms with that. But I need to apologize for acting the way I did. Because… And look here, I was right to be angry,” she said, lifting one hand to point at him. “Stop going places you know you have no right to be. But I’m apologizing now because I wasn’t being honest about why I was angry. Not to myself, and not to you.” God damn, those eyes could see right down into her soul, couldn’t they. She shut her own to block out the sight of him studying her like that. “Honestly, I was jealous. And I think you know that too.”

She heard him let out a quiet exhalation, and when she opened her eyes, he’d uncrossed his legs. He was grinning at her, damn the devil, looking at her with those impossibly green eyes. “You aren’t the only one,” he said slowly, “since we’re being honest.”

Now she was the one to be surprised. What had she missed? When had that happened? With a sudden burst of realization, she said, “Oh! You mean Doug?”

Dean leaned toward her now, and unconsciously she mirrored his movement. “Hell yeah I was jealous of Road House back there, Becca. Of course I was jealous. We’re on a date and some other guy calls you darlin’.”

“You were?” She was breathless now, and her brain was shutting down. “We were?”

“Jesus, Becca,” he said, and he reached for her.

The room phone ringing startled them both. Becca jumped to her feet, off the bed, feeling her breakneck pulse rushing through every inch of her. She gulped and took several deep breaths.

Dean - oh lord - kept eye contact with her as he answered the phone. “Yeah?” There was a pause as he listened, and he slowly rose to his feet. “That sounds good. I’ll be there.” He put the receiver back on the phone. 

“Was that the dinner call,” Becca asked, her voice cracking a little.

He gave her a sideways, rueful smile. “They’re setting up downstairs. Too bad.” He stepped forward to her and put a hand underneath her chin. “We were just getting somewhere.”


	10. The Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Becca finish their conversation (which, surprising to them both, doesn't just consist of talking).

Becca sighed as she took a step backward. She saw her disappointment mirror itself in Dean’s piercing green eyes as he lowered his arms to his sides. God, how much she wanted to close that gap between them again. But she couldn’t. The few actual rules of the house were important enough to be followed. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t. Not yet. Not with things being as they were. Not with him being a guest, and her having obligations.

“We were just getting somewhere,” he repeated in a gently questioning tone, as if he weren’t quite sure about that himself.

Brutal honesty, she thought, biting the inside of her cheek. If she wanted to receive it, she’d have to offer it herself in turn. “You’re not wrong,” she said. He grinned and would have moved forward again, but she held up a hand toward him. “You have no idea how much… how much I want us to get somewhere. But it wouldn’t be right.”

“You’re sure about that?” That tone in his voice… she had the sudden and vivid memory of their first meeting, when he’d thought she was saying he wasn’t welcome to stay at the Inn. He thought she was saying he wasn’t right. That he wasn’t good enough for her. That’s what this was. He thought…

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Becca said, frowning. “It wouldn’t be right because you’re a guest and I work here. For fuck’s sake, Dean,” she repeated. She reached up and grabbed a fistful of her hair in frustration. “I’m so tired of this. Can’t we just say something cleanly and directly without there being subtext and double meanings and needing to translate everything when we’re supposed to be speaking the same goddamn language? Aren’t you tired of not saying what you mean? Aren’t you tired of trying to make sense of three different layers of meaning in one sentence?”

“All right,” he said, his voice low and even. “You’re right.”

She lowered her hand and turned to look at him. The smile on his face was gentle, even a bit contrite. “About which part,” she asked him cautiously.

“All of it,” he said. He took a step toward her, but this time, she didn’t move away again. “Here’s a question for you, Becca – and when you answer, I want you to say what you mean.”

“I’ll be honest,” Becca agreed, meaning every word even though she gulped as she said them.

He looked down at her with that charming sideways smile of his and met her eyes. There again was that same thrill of electricity, jolting up from her toes all the way into her fingers. If she’d never known what it would actually feel like to drown in someone’s eyes, now she certainly did. God, he was beautiful.

“What,” she said in response to the question she hadn’t heard.

“If I wasn’t staying here,” he repeated. “If we didn’t have that coming between us. What then.”

She took in a long breath, arranging her thoughts. If he wasn’t a guest. She wouldn’t feel guilty about wanting him. What a relief that would be. She almost answered with that alone - but no, she admitted reluctantly to herself, that wasn’t the whole truth. “If you weren’t a guest, or if I didn’t work here, then whatever this is, we could follow it and see where it goes. But that would just be one thing less to worry about.”

“What else is there to worry about?” he asked, closing that gap between them. “Cards on the table, Becca.”

“You,” she answered. Her heart gave a terrified flutter within her ribcage, but she forced herself to keep talking. She couldn’t possibly just leave it at that, not with the way he was looking at her. “I worry about you. You’re always holding something back. I can be honest with you, Dean. I can be an open book. Whatever you want to know, just ask. I know I can be honest with you. But what I want to know is, can you be honest with me?”

His jaw worked as they stared at each other. She told herself that if she was being realistic, that alone should have been her answer. But she refused to let herself come to any conclusions just from that. The whole point of this nerve-wracking conversation was to hear him say things directly, instead of wildly interpreting. She could be wrong about what his silence meant. She hoped she was wrong. Unconsciously, she bit her lower lip.

He seemed to shorten a little then as his shoulders relaxed. Then he lifted his hand to her face. She gasped as he cupped her cheek in his palm and ran his thumb over her mouth in one slow, smooth stroke. “You’re going to have to stop doing that,” he said. “I can’t think when you do that.”

HE couldn’t think? The warmth of his hand on her skin, the half an inch that kept their bodies apart. It was overwhelming. Weren’t the novels she’d read hyperbolic? Wasn’t it impossible to actually have your brain shut down like this? “You haven’t answered me,” she said, clawing her way out of her mental fog even though everything in her was screaming.

“It’s not the kind of question I can just answer yes or no to.”

“However long the answer is, I want to hear it. Really.” She lifted her hand to rest it on the back of his.

His eyes broke away from hers to look at her hand, holding his. There was something in his expression now, something absolutely unreadable. “This is what I’m talking about,” she said to him. “I can tell you’ve got something going on, but you’re not saying it. I don’t want to put a meaning to it if that’s not what’s actually there.”

He looked back up at her. “What do you think I’ve got going on?”

“I think you don’t usually have conversations like this. I think you’ve had a harder life than most. And I think that’s what’s got you so closed off. You can trust me, Dean. I know we’ve only just met, but I need you to know you can trust me. I want you to trust me.”

“I do,” he said, and his eyes widened, as if he was surprised to hear himself say it. “You’re not the type to lie, are you, Becca?”

Becca let out a little laugh. “I’m the type to notice that I still haven’t gotten an answer yet.”

His shoulders seemed to deflate somewhat then. He gave her a smile, but slowly withdrew his hand from her. Suddenly, her cheek felt very cold. “I told you I can’t answer yes or no to that,” he said slowly, as if weighing each of his words. “That’s the truth, Becca. You’re right this isn’t the kind of situation I usually get into. You’re not far off about my life. Maybe you’re even right about me being closed off. But I’ll tell you this, and you can be damn sure it’s the truth. I don’t want to lie to you.”

She wanted so badly to accept that, to wrap herself in it and tell herself everything had been worked out, everything was okay. But she couldn’t. “Not wanting to,” she said, and god damn it, why did she feel like crying now, “doesn’t mean you won’t.”

“Shit,” he said.

The next thing she knew, he was standing right in front of her, so closely she could feel the edge of the zipper on his jacket catch a bit against her dress – but as he reached her, he hesitated. Those brilliant green eyes scoured into hers, asking the unspoken question. He was waiting to see how she was reacting, she realized. He was waiting for her to move.

And so she did.

She threw her arms around his neck, and a split second later his arms circled her waist. They hurtled against the wall as their lips met in a breathless crush. She knew in her heart of hearts that this was definitely, definitely, bending the rules. But in the moment, she couldn’t care less. He was strong. He was sturdy. And he was kissing her like she was the last thing tethering him to the ground. She moaned involuntarily, “For fuck’s sake, Dean.”

“Yes,” he whispered in response. She gasped as his hands slid up her back and found purchase in her hair. “Yes, Becca.”

“Mmm-no,” she said, forcing herself to break their kiss. “Wait. Wait.”

He pulled back from her, his shoulders rising and falling as he caught his breath. She let her hands rest upon his chest, and oh dear god he was such a solid man. She shook her head to clear it of some of the fog that had taken over.

“I’m still off limits,” he said, reluctant but understanding.

She let out a little chuckle and lifted a hand to her mouth. “I’ve never done that… I mean, I’ve never broken the rules like that.”

He leaned in toward her then, and it was a damn good thing she was already against the wall. She planted her hands on the surface behind her for support as he cupped her face in his hands. He ran his thumb over her lip for the second, soul-shattering time that day. “I’m breaking my rules for you too, Becca.”

He stepped away from her, tracing her arms with his fingers as he did. Where his hands had touched, the fine hairs on her skin rose as if by static electricity. She straightened with an uncontrollable shiver. “So,” she said, and she forced herself to walk toward the door, trying her absolute hardest to keep her pace steady despite the shakiness of her legs. “So.”

“So,” he repeated after her, mirth lacing his tone.

“Dinner should be ready soon,” she said, as casually as she possibly could, as she opened the door. “I’ll see you down there?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said.

She gave him one last look, lingering on those lips as if she could still feel them on her own. “Okay,” she said, almost in a whisper, and then she turned to stride toward the stairwell. Guilt and excitement tumbled around in equal measure inside her, and she wondered if she’d been gone too long already, if her absence had been noticed.

“Becca,” he said from behind her. She turned to see him leaning against the doorway, one ankle crossed in front of the other. He grinned at her, and her heart fluttered. “Here’s hoping we break the rules again real soon.”


	11. The Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Inn serves its complimentary dinner, and Becca makes plans with Dean for the next day.

Dinner that night was a disjointed affair. Becca had known it would be, when she’d walked into the dining room and the only people sitting at the table were Mother and Lisa Applebaum. Normally, mealtime at Summerview felt more convivial than this, but the stifled atmosphere was to be expected on a day like today. Most of the guests, as Meg informed Becca when she brought her a plate, had declined the invitation to dinner.

Not coming to dinner wasn’t unusual in itself, of course. Middleton was only a few miles away, and guests often chose to explore their options there. The evening meal at Summerview Inn, just like the breakfast they served, was only complimentary, and some people didn’t care for sharing a meal with strangers in such close quarters. Then, too, there was the limited option here at the Inn. Special orders could always be made, and dietary restrictions taken into account, but as it most often happened, each day had its own meal assigned to it. There wasn’t the time or the resources to make more than one entrée per evening on a daily basis. But even so, when offered free food, a fair amount of people did take them up on it.

Today, though, at a table that usually sat a dozen or so, there were only those four people - Mother, Meg, Lisa Applebaum, and Becca herself. Lisa tried gamely for a little bit of conversation, thanking them for the meal and congratulating Meg on a job well done, which was absolutely deserved. But overall, talk was limited and subdued.

With Mother, that was especially concerning. She’d hardly said a word beyond a quiet hello since Becca had taken her seat across from her. It didn’t sit right, even though Becca had to admit she had felt a small wave of relief, knowing that Mother didn’t seem to care just how long it had taken her to come back downstairs. But Becca had offered her hand, and Mother had accepted it with a gentle squeeze. They’d be all right, Becca thought then. It would take some time, but they’d be all right.

And then, ten minutes later when Dean had walked in… Becca wasn’t sure whether or not she should hate herself for the thrill of excitement she felt. She should be sad today, like everyone was. Like Mother was. But she discovered she had to fight to keep the smile from her face.

He’d changed his shirt. She’d noticed that immediately. Instead of the plain tee under the multiple layers, he was wearing one long sleeved proper shirt, buttoned up. As he sat at the table next to her, she caught a whiff of cologne. He’d absolutely gussied himself up, just to come down to dinner. Just because she would be there. She had never once, not once in her life, felt the impulse to swoon, and yet, god damn it, there it was.

Meg started to stand, but Becca rose to her feet first. “It’s all right,” she said, “I’ll get it.” She turned to Dean and gave him a deliberately polite, professional smile. “The sides today are mashed potatoes or whole grain rice. Which would you prefer?” 

“I’ll have what you’re having.” He gave her a grin, and oh dear god he wasn’t even trying to be subtle about it, was he.

“I’ll be right back with that, sir,” Becca said, feeling incredibly awkward. Was she covering well? Did Mother notice? What about Meg? Or Lisa Applebaum, for that matter, she thought, even though there wasn’t any real reason to care whether Lisa picked up on it or not. God, it would be so much easier if she could just read people’s minds. She’d definitely like to be able to read his, she sighed as she pushed open the swinging kitchen door.

Not even to see if he was lying, she thought as she portioned him out a scoop of potatoes. After the conversation they’d just had, she trusted him. He’d been more open, more honest then. She wanted to see inside his head just to know more about who he was. They’d only barely gotten into any of that.

Who was he, really? She didn’t know much about him at all. What did he do for a living? He’d said, that first night, that he’d been on the road for a few days. Was that normal for him, or did he have somewhere to go back to after this? And how much did he really want from her?

She knew the basics of what he wanted. He’d shown her as much when he’d thrown her against the wall upstairs. Her toes clenched, and she stamped her feet a little to stop that. She had to admit, she wanted that much herself. But was he the wandering type? Was it stupid to let herself feel anything beyond…

Lust, she thought as she pushed the kitchen door open and her eyes met his. There was no point in bandying about it. This feeling, this shimmer that ran up her spine when she looked at him, it was lust, plain and simple.

She managed to put his plate on the table in front of him without letting her hands shake everything into his lap. “I hope you like it,” she said as she lowered herself into her seat again.

“I’m sure I will,” he said, and oh lord, it definitely didn’t seem like he was just talking about the food. 

She took up a forkful of chicken and ate it, glad for the excuse to focus on something else, anything else, other than those eyes. She might be feeling all sorts of ways, but damn it, she could keep it under wraps. She could hold it together.

And then his foot pressed against hers under the table.

“How have you enjoyed your stay with us, Miss Applebaum,” Becca asked. Her voice was a bit more strained than she’d have liked it to have been, but for what it was worth, nobody but her seemed to hear that.

“It’s been lovely,” Lisa said with a tiny smile. Then that smile faltered, and she said, “I am sorry about today. I’ve never been… I’ve never seen that happen. I am so sorry.”

“That’s kind of you. Thank you,” Mother said. She took a sip from her water – to cover the crack in her voice, Becca thought – and then said, “It’s been a difficult day for all of us. But if you’d like to extend your stay with us tomorrow past checkout, we’d be glad to have you. We’ll be having a memorial of sorts.”

Dean shifted in his seat, and Becca glanced up at him. There was a definite question in there, she knew, but for some reason he wasn’t asking it.

“A chance to remember her and say goodbye,” Becca said.

“That’s awful nice of you,” he said slowly. “Most hotels wouldn’t do that kind of thing for a guest.”

Becca bristled. She wasn’t sure she had the right to feel offended, but she did, all the same. “She wasn’t a guest,” Becca said. “She was Mrs. K.”

He closed his eyes then, just for a moment, and she wondered, was that him, literally shutting her out? But then he looked back at her, and he said, “Need any help with that memorial tomorrow?”

She thought on that a second. “If you could give me a ride into town tomorrow, that would be nice. I need to buy a few things.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “You don’t even have to ask.”

With a jolt, Becca remembered she was at a table with other people. She closed her eyes so no one could see them rolling as she turned back to her plate. “Thank you, Mr. Morrison,” she said, calmly and casually and please god let it be a successful cover up, she begged.

“Any time,” he said. He matched her tone. God, he really was perfect.

Dinner ended with everyone congratulating Meg again on her culinary efforts, and Lisa Applebaum accepting the invitation to the memorial the following day. It didn’t feel normal, not by a long shot, but it did feel like at least things were taking a step in that direction.

It was incredibly normal, for example, to go into the lobby and start preparing for her night shift desk duty. But that feeling of normality got thrown by the wayside by the way Dean Morrison followed her. 

He leaned one elbow on the desk. “What time were you wanting to go shopping tomorrow?” He’d been so effortless in leaving the table, and he was so incredibly casual now, that she could almost believe that nothing had happened between them upstairs.

Almost, except for that burst of sense memory in her lips. She forced herself to shake that off. “We’ll need to leave early,” she told him, “as soon as I’m off duty. I’ll need to bake the cake and get some sleep before Mrs. K’s memorial.”

Dean straightened up with a wide, friendly smile. “Good night, Mrs. Norwood,” he said as Mother entered the lobby from the dining room.

“Good night,” Mother replied. She turned to Becca, and her eyebrows rose a little in question. Becca didn’t have to wonder what that question was. Without thinking about it, Becca shrugged dismissively in response. That was a lie, wasn’t it, even though she hadn’t actually said it aloud. Becca felt a little bit guilty, but it was only a little white lie. She hadn’t gotten into too much.

Yet, she sighed. “Good night, Mother. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night, Becca,” Mother said as she walked away. “Call me if you need anything.”

“I will.”

As Mother’s footsteps receded down the hallway, Dean turned back to Becca. “One of these days you’ll have to tell me how it works,” he said.

“How what works?”

“This,” he said as he gestured at the desk. “You. You work all night, you sleep all day – where’d you put the time for living?”

“I…” she paused. No one had ever asked her that before. She had to think a minute. “I guess I don’t,” she said, surprising herself with the truth of it. “Not anymore. Not since I was in school.”

“We’re gonna have to work on that,” he said, his voice low and slow and full of meaning. He reached over the desk, and her breath caught in her throat as his hand touched hers. “We both have stuff to deal with, and I know that. God damn it, Becca, I know that. But this?” He paused, searching for the right words.

“There’s something here,” she said. She wasn’t making things bigger than they really were. They were absolutely on the same wavelength. This was… This was really something.

“Yeah,” he said. He lifted her hand and brushed the back of her knuckles with his lips. “I think you’re right.” When he let go of her hand, she pulled it to her and held it to her chest. He lowered his head, smiling to himself. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” he said. “Bright and early.”

“Bright and early,” she repeated, and she allowed herself to sink into her chair as she watched him go.

Good luck to me, she thought to herself, good luck for everything at once. Good luck for tomorrow, good luck for the future, and good luck for tonight. Focusing on work would not be an easy task. Not when all she wanted to do was daydream.


	12. The Drive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On their way to and from the grocery store, Becca and Dean share an unexpectedly emotional conversation.

Becca did manage to get some proper work done that evening, despite the way her mind kept pulling her away from auditing the logbooks and responding to the Inn’s emails. Every few minutes she had to drag herself back to the task at hand. She would really rather have been replaying what had happened upstairs in room seventeen, and so, despite her best intentions, she did.

The way his arms had felt around her. The taste of his lips as his breath had mingled with hers. The light in the depths of those vibrant, intense, devastating green eyes. It was frustrating, and exciting, and distracting, all at the same time.

She clicked through the reservations in the system, and although she’d intended – really, she had – to make sure everything was in order for the rest of the month, instead of behaving herself and looking to the future, she found herself drawn to the present. To the information on room seventeen.

Mother had updated that information today, by the timestamps. It looked like he’d paid through the rest of the week. The room was his until Saturday morning. Could she hold it for him, if he decided to stay longer?

Becca looked at her email inbox, brimming over as it was with requests for information and reservations. The automated system on the website was a very useful tool, but at the moment, she was more irritated about that than anything. All of these people, all of them wanting to spend their fall vacations at Summerview.

She really shouldn’t have expected anything else, and she told herself that even as she wished she didn’t have to do quite so much maneuvering for scheduling. Summerview Inn had its most visitors during the summer and autumn months. There was no better place to watch the seasons change than right here, looking down over the Summer River Valley. The green giving way to reds and golds like a tapestry unfurling really was gorgeous.

So many guests. So many responsibilities.

Did she really want him to stay longer, though? Didn’t she really want him to check out as soon as possible? 

She sighed and clicked out of the reservation system. It just wouldn’t do, would it. This overthinking business. What was the use of it, to spend so much time wondering about what might be, what could be, when there was no guarantee any of it would come to pass?

She remembered then what Doug had told her that past afternoon. It had been sage advice, but it hadn’t really settled in her chest until now. Just live. Just go. It would be much better than this way of spinning her wheels.

So, that next morning, when Dean arrived downstairs even before Mother did, Becca decided to do just that. She scribbled a note on a post-it for Mother, put up the “back in fifteen minutes” sign, and left the desk of Summerview Inn.

“Think you’ll catch heat from the boss?” Dean asked as Becca slid onto the seat beside him and shut the passenger door behind her.

“I told her yesterday about the cake,” Becca said. “And besides, nobody ever needs anything at six in the morning. I never see guests before seven.”

“Thought I was a guest.” He gave her a grin as he turned the key in the ignition. His car roared to life and they were off.

She shook her head. “This doesn’t count.” At the look he gave her, that one eyebrow raised ever so slightly, she said, “We made actual plans. You didn’t just wake up needing something.”

He laughed then, low in his throat, but he didn’t say anything. He kept the joke to himself as instead he turned the volume on the radio up a notch. It took Becca a few seconds, but she finally placed the tune. Shoot to Thrill. It was almost ironic. Almost.

“You’re into classic rock, I see.”

“Who isn’t? It’s classic. It rocks.”

Becca laughed. She couldn’t argue with that. But then… “It occurred to me yesterday,” Becca said, bunching the fabric of her shirt in her right hand. “You know a lot more about me than I know about you.”

“Is that right,” he asked casually.

“You know it is,” she laughed again, although this time it was nervous more than anything. “Let’s start with the basics, okay? Like… What’s your occupation?”

The edges of his mouth lowered in a “fair enough” kind of gesture. “I’ve been working for my father for… hell, my whole life. I was raised that way. Be a part of the family business. Kind of like you,” he said, gently nodding his head toward her.

“What do you and your father do?”

He hesitated, and his hands clenched around the steering wheel. “He doesn’t do much of anything anymore,” Dean said. “Dad… Ah… Dad died a while back.”

“Oh,” Becca said. “I’m sorry.” She paused and bit the inside of her cheek. “That’s another way we’re the same, I guess.”

“I’m sorry too,” Dean said, and the muscle in his jaw clenched. “When’d you lose him?”

“Charlie was only six, and I wasn’t even in preschool yet.” Becca took in a shaky breath. “The worst part about it, the thing that really gets to me? He was younger than I am now. Every year I live past 28, I get older than he ever got to be. I know it’s not rational to feel guilty about that, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling it.”

Dean slowed the car and turned toward her. Once again there were a million possible meanings to that look in his eyes. And then he asked… “How’d it happen?” Becca blinked. Out of all the million meanings, that wasn’t where she thought he was going.

“Peacefully in his sleep, thank god,” Becca said. “I can be grateful for that, at least. But it happened overnight. No warning. No reason for it. It…” Becca blinked away a tear. “It was unexpected. But there’s really no way to prepare for something like that anyway, I guess.”

“In his sleep…” Dean chewed on that, it seemed, and he turned his attention back to the road ahead of them. For a second the conversation paused, and there was nothing but Angus Young between them. Then, with an almost measured tone, Dean said, “Mine went sudden too. Heart attack.”

He wasn’t crying, but from the sound of his voice just now, he wasn’t far from it. Becca shifted in her seat to look directly at him. Yes, she realized, there it was, the light sheen of unshed tears just barely hanging on.

“What you said just now. About feeling guilty.” His face was very tight, as if it were by sheer force of will he was holding himself together. “You tell yourself there was nothing you could have done. You tell yourself sometimes things happen. And you’re right about that. You’re right. But try telling that to the feeling that you could’ve done something. Should’ve done something. So. Yeah.” He cleared his throat and shrugged his shoulders. “You said it best yourself. That’s another way we’re the same, I guess.”

He gestured with his left hand at the town ahead. “Where are we headed?” The deliberate attempt at nonchalance didn’t go unnoticed.

But Becca was glad he’d done it. It gave her a reason to hold it together too. She blinked the tears out of her own eyes and pointed. “The store’s just up there.”

For a few welcome minutes then, Becca could focus on the minutiae of ingredients and the banality of shopping. Dean followed, being helpful, even though he stopped a few times to text someone on that flip phone of his. She wondered what he was saying, and who he was saying it to. But the man was entitled to his privacy, so she forced herself to stop thinking about it. Instead, she focused on answering the questions of which box mix to buy, which brand of icing, should she make two kinds of cake?

When she’d answered them, and paid at the checkout, she and Dean got back in the car and headed off once again to Summerview Inn. His phone buzzed in his pocket as he drove, but he ignored it. Instead, he said, “I could give you a hand with cooking, too. If you’d like.”

“It’s called baking when it’s a cake,” Becca teased, “but yes, thank you, that would be nice. Meg will have her hands full taking care of breakfast.”

“She seems nice,” Dean said. “How long’s she been working for you?”

“Only a couple of years now,” Becca said, and no, absolutely not, she would not allow herself to get jealous over something as stupid as him thinking another girl was nice. Meg WAS nice. He was allowed to like other people. Jealousy was a stupid, stupid emotion. “Although honestly it feels like I’ve known her forever. She’s practically my sister now. It’s a good thing, too. Sometimes I miss Charlie too much.”

“And Charlie’s your… older brother, you said?”

“Yes,” Becca answered as they pulled into the parking lot. “What about you? Do you have one?” She gathered the bags of cake makings she’d bought and started walking toward the Inn.

“An older brother?” Dean climbed out of the car and followed Becca. “Nah. I’ve got a younger…”

Entering the building, they were met with a surprise. There at the desk, Mother was in the middle of conversation with a newcomer, a very tall young man, wearing a black suit and tie. From his authoritative stance alone, Becca would have guessed he was in law enforcement, and she knew that must be the case when she noticed the badge he was showing to Mother. They both turned to look over as Dean and Becca entered the lobby.

“Brother though,” Dean finished saying.


	13. The Agent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An agent from the FBI has arrived, seeking the Norwoods' help with an investigation.

“Good morning, Mrs. Norwood,” Dean said with a wide ingratiating smile. “I hope we didn’t leave you stranded too long.”

“I got German chocolate and plain vanilla,” Becca said, lifting the bags as evidence. See, Mother? I really did go shopping. I swear. “I hope that’s okay?”

“Of course,” Mother smiled at Becca. “I got your note. I’m glad you’re back now. Would you please watch the desk for a minute? I need to show Agent…” her voice trailed off.

“Manzarek,” the tall man said. His voice was very blank and no-nonsense. Becca wondered which agency he was with, and tried to get another glimpse at that badge on the desk. But before she could register what those big black letters said, the man swept up his badge and tucked it into his jacket, and through it all, the expression on his face didn’t shift a bit. Becca felt intimidated, and it wasn’t just the idea of an authority figure. There was something about the man’s face that made her uneasy. Maybe it was his sideburns, she thought. It was hard to trust a person who trimmed their sideburns into points.

“Manzarek,” Mother repeated, “That’s right, I’m sorry. Agent Manzarek would like to see the record room.”

“I could show him up, if you’d like,” Becca told her. “Nothing’s in the oven yet, anyway, so it’s really no problem.”

“If you’re sure,” Mother said, but she was clearly grateful for the offer. The records room was on the third floor, and although Mother was in decent health, she was of an age when the climb did sometimes take it out of her.

“Of course,” Becca told her. “Let me just go put these things in the kitchen and I’ll be right back.”

She took her bags through the dining room into the kitchen. Meg was already there, doing the prep work for the build your own omelets she’d planned for today’s breakfast. “Good morning,” Meg said, pausing in the middle of the onions she was dicing. “Oh! Good morning to you too,” she said as Dean followed Becca in.

“How’s it going,” Dean asked.

“Aces,” Meg answered. “What’s…” Her voice trailed off and she looked at Becca. 

“Special invitation, Dean’s offered to help bake,” Becca explained. She set her supplies on the kitchen table and turned to Dean. “We’ll need mixing bowls and the measuring cups. They’re in that cabinet there.” Becca pointed. “Will you get things set up for me? I’ll be right back.”

“I could go with,” Dean offered.

Becca shook her head, smiling at him. “No, that’s all right, thank you. It’ll only take a minute.” She could Dean watching her as she left the kitchens, and she could only imagine the look he was giving her. For as guarded as he was, it surprised her how expressive he could be. Unless, of course, that was just her putting meaning where there wasn’t really any. She’d done that before.

“Ready?” she asked the agent as she walked up to the lobby desk.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Right this way.” A fierce and ridiculous debate waged within her as she led him down the hall. Elevator? Stairs? She would take the stairs if she were by herself, but would it be rude to make him climb? What was the protocol when it came to dealing with…

She made a quick decision and stopped at the elevator. “Which agency are you with?” Becca asked as she pressed the call button.

“FBI, ma’am,” he answered. Boy, that expressionless face was something spooky. He was giving her literally nothing.

“FBI,” Becca repeated. “I don’t think we’ve had any FBI guys here before. We might have had some, you never know, but nobody that came walking in like ‘yes please I have a reservation and also I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.’ Why would they, if they’re just on vacation? That would be pretty silly of them, I’d think.” She recognized she was rambling, and bit the inside of her cheek.

The agent cleared his throat. “Yes, ma’am. We don’t like to broadcast it.”

The elevator doors slid open and Becca darted inside. She waited until the agent had followed before she hit the button for the second floor. “We’ll have to climb one flight,” she said as the elevator slowly rose. “This only goes up to two. My grandfather had it installed. I wasn’t there, of course, not for that, but I’m glad we have it in, even though the construction did make things difficult, I hear. We try to keep room assignments balanced out but you never know what might happen during somebody’s stay here. I broke my leg once, when I was ten, and you know how it is.” 

God damn it, she was rambling again.

When the doors slid open onto the second floor, Becca darted out of the elevator again. Slow down, she told herself. She hadn’t done anything wrong, after all. There was no reason to act so suspiciously. “Right this way,” she told the agent. “The records room is upstairs.”

They climbed the final flight, and Becca turned into the first door on the right. She flicked on the light switch. “What were you needing to see?” she asked him.

“Your--– oh,” he said, cutting himself off in his surprise as he followed her through. Finally, expression. His brow furrowed as he looked around the room.

The records room was, for the most part, bookshelves. It could almost have been a library, with its floor to ceiling shelves along the walls, most of them packed full with the Inn’s past logbooks. This room, just as much as the Inn itself, was a monument to history.

“How…” he paused again, and she thought maybe, possibly, he looked a little lost. That pleased her. If he was human, he wasn’t that intimidating.

“The shelves are arranged chronologically, starting on this wall.” She pointed to the oldest set of books, leatherbound with gilded lettering on the spines. “We also have a database, though, that’ll be easier,” Becca said as she led him into the room, to the back corner, where a computer sat on a desk. They’d upgraded again this year, thank god for that, and there was no way he could find fault with their system. “If this will help?”

He took a seat in the chair by the desk, and even sitting down, he was almost taller than she was standing. He reached for the mouse. “How do you have it indexed?”

“You can search here,” she pointed at the screen. “There are breakdowns by name, locations, dates, room numbers. Whatever you’re wanting to see. I could pull the books for you, if you need?”

“This will be fine, ma’am,” he said. “Thank you for your assistance.”

“Could I ask what this is about,” she said, and she bit her lip. “Should we be worried, I mean?”

He paused for a millisecond before he clicked into the database. “No, ma’am,” he answered stoically. “No cause for alarm.”

That was a bit of a relief, at least. Until--- 

“I might have some follow-up questions for you.”

“Ah,” Becca said, flustered. “I was going to go to sleep soon.” She saw him glance, then, at his watch. That only served to fluster her more. “I’m not usually awake now. It’s all part of running the Inn, you see, I guess I’m what you might call the night watchman, and I don’t usually stay up this late. Early. Late?” She was rambling again, and it was really terrible this time. She couldn’t help but grimace. The only thing she could hope for was that he’d been truthful, and he wasn’t there investigating the Inn. If he was, then from the way she was acting around him, she looked guilty. Incredibly, irredeemably guilty.

“I see,” he said. She suspected, from the slow way he said it, that he might have not been being entirely truthful himself just then. But it was easier to pretend that he did.

Becca looked at the clock. It was getting much later than she’d thought. “I’m sorry, but they need me in the kitchens,” she told him. “Will you be all right up here?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he told her. “Thank you.”

She left him then, clicking through the database and taking down notes. The whole way down the stairs, her mind was a whirlwind of questions. What had they done to get the FBI to investigate them? Was he investigating the Inn, or was he investigating a specific guest? She’d noticed, in that conversation, how he hadn’t actually told her what he was looking for. But, she told herself, there was nothing to worry about. He’d said as much. There was nothing she could do about it if there was, anyway. Becca resolved to bide her time, and see where this situation took itself.

As she entered the kitchens, she found Meg laughing about something. “---prove me wrong.”

Dean laughed along with her. “That’s the way to do it.” He looked over at Becca, and the grin on his face widened. “Got it all ready.” He gestured at the kitchen table, and Becca saw that indeed he had. “Where do we start?”

The next twenty minutes flew by, filled with cake mix and laughter and easy conversation. Becca could hardly believe it. Here she was, working side by side with a Greek statue come to life, and she wasn’t falling over herself. That could, of course, have had something to do with Meg being there as well. The dynamic was pleasant, easygoing, and Becca hardly had time to obsess over anything.

Until she made the casual comment about needing to go to bed, meeting his eyes, and feeling that same unbelievable jolt shimmer up through her spine. That was always going to be there, company present or not, wasn’t it. And she saw his smile turn into a smirk as he recognized her reaction to him.

God, she thought. This man was unbelievable.


	14. The Investigation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca eavesdrops on the FBI agent, and then finds herself drawn into the investigation itself.

Becca wished she didn’t have to sleep.

She’d never felt like that before. Even growing up, she had never felt the compulsion to stay awake. Guests came, and guests went, and though the faces might have changed, one day was always strikingly similar to the day that had come before, and to the day that had come after. In sleep, in dreams, that was when the changes came. Becca never could predict what her dreams would be about. But she could point at any day on the calendar and tell you with a fair degree of accuracy exactly what had happened on that day. Days were predictable. Days were boring.

And then James Dean Morrison walked into her life.

At first, she told herself it was purely a physical thing. It had to be, didn’t it? What she was feeling, it had to just be a hormonal reaction to how physically perfect he was. His wide shoulders, his toned arms, the absolute symmetry of his face, and those fascinating, captivating eyes.

But then she had started replaying their conversations in her mind. And she started to realize, the pull she felt toward him, it was more than just a physical response. There was something legitimately there. There was something about him, not just about his body but about him. Something sweet, something good, like the melted center of a lava cake. 

She wanted to stay awake. She wanted to talk to him, to be with him. She wanted to explore.

But at this point, she knew she’d been awake too long. It was getting harder to think, let alone focus. She’d had to leave him, with his promise that he would help Meg see to the cakes. She’d had to make the lonely walk upstairs, every step taking her further and further away from where she’d really wanted to be.

As she reached the top of the stairs, she paused. The agent was still here, she realized, and he was on the phone with someone.

“---any other explanation,” he said. “It has to be Summerview Inn. It has to be.”

There was a thump, and pages rustled. Becca knew she shouldn’t be eavesdropping – especially not on a federal agent! That was probably a felony, wasn’t it? - but she crept forward to the doorway anyway. She peeked around the edge of the door into the room.

Agent Manzarek had his back to the door, and one of the logbooks open on the table in front of him. “So get this,” he said, trailing his finger along the writing in the book. “Thomas Sinclair, twelve years ago. Greta Fitzwilliam, twenty-five years ago. George Panacek,” he said as he tapped on the page. “Thirty-seven years ago. That can’t be a coincidence. One or two, maybe, but I’m going down your list and I’ve found seven so far. SEVEN, Bobby. This thing goes back a century and I’m telling you it’s got to be older than that.”

There was another pause, and the agent straightened up. He started to turn, and Becca whipped herself around out into the hallway. Had he seen her? No. He kept talking. She breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” the agent said. “Every single one of those people stayed here. And they stayed here in October.”

There was a pause. Becca wished she could hear what was on the other end of that phone call. What was going on? What was wrong? He’d said she didn’t need to worry, but it was starting to seem like maybe she’d better.

“I’m right there with you,” the agent sighed. Becca heard his chair scrape against the floor as he seated himself. “We both told him to wait, but since when has he ever listened to good advice? But he was right. Again. If he’d waited, we’d be another three steps behind catching this thing. He’s the one that found out about the sleepers.” 

There was another pause in the conversation, and that gave Becca the second to think. What did he mean by sleepers? Like, sleeper agents? That was a thing, right, something to do with international spies? Was she just delirious from lack of sleep and that’s why this conversation was making no sense? Or was it that she was only hearing one half of it? Should she keep listening? Should she let him know she was here? Was it awkward, now, that she’d been standing here this long without saying anything? Becca was beginning to feel herself panic.

“They’re planning some kind of party. Kind of like a wake, I think. I’ll see if I can find out anything else there. You keep looking on your end too. Maybe there’s a pattern to who gets picked.” The agent let out another long sigh. “Yeah. I sure hope so. Take care, Bobby. Talk to you soon.”

Becca took five quick tiptoed steps back to the stairwell. Then she straightened her shoulders and walked confidently into the hall, making sure her steps were heavy enough to be heard. She reached the doorway and found the agent looking her way, with the logbook closed on the desk behind him.

“I’m just on my way to bed,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady and guiltless. She was doing it, she thought. “Is there anything I can get for you before I go?”

The agent stood and straightened his tie. “Would you have time to answer a few questions?”

Becca blinked at him and bit the inside of her cheek. “If it’s only a few,” she said. “I’m really… I’m really very tired.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll make it quick.” He gestured to the chair at the desk for her to sit down.

Becca’s blood felt cold in her veins. She’d never been interrogated before. This was incredibly intimidating. HE was incredibly intimidating. Still, she forced herself to keep her cool and take a casual seat.

“You’ve been an employee of this Inn for how long, ma’am?”

“Officially, since April of 2000. Unofficially, I’ve always helped out here and there. I was born here, so it’s always been part of my job because, well, that’s how family works, I guess, and---” she cut herself off. “I’m sorry. I’m nervous.”

The agent smiled at her, and she felt a wave of relief. It was a kind smile, a soft smile, and since it reached his hazel eyes, it was an honest one. “I understand, ma’am. Don’t be nervous. You’re not in trouble. I just need to show you a few photographs.” He pulled a notebook from his jacket and removed a Polaroid snapshot from it. “Do you remember this man?”

Becca took the picture and studied it. A middle-aged man wearing a bright red Hawaiian shirt, grilling steaks in someone’s backyard. Out of instinct she flipped it over. On the back, someone’s scrawled handwriting spelled out “Tommy, July 4th.” She shrugged and turned it over to examine the man in the photograph again. Square haircut, rounded soccer dad face, but overall, pretty nondescript. “I’m sorry,” she said, handing the photograph back. “I don’t know him.”

“Hmm,” Agent Manzarek said. He slid the Polaroid back into the notebook and traded it for a faded newspaper clipping. “What about this one? You might be too young, but if you could remember anything that would help…”

Becca took it. An obituary notice for Greta Fitzwilliam, devoted wife, mother of five, grandmother of eight. In lieu of flowers she’d asked for donations to the local pet shelter. Sweet. Even though from the date of publication, it had happened decades ago, Becca felt sorry this woman had died. “I’m sorry,” Becca said and she handed back the clipping. “I don’t remember her either. They were both guests here, I guess?” She closed her eyes against her own stupid question. Of course they’d have been guests. Why else was he here?

But the agent was nice about it. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, completely non-judgmentally. 

“You might have better luck asking Mother,” Becca suggested. “She’s got a better memory than I do. But we get so many guests here. If they were regulars, then I could’ve maybe helped you, but I’m sorry, I can’t, not with these.” 

“There’s nothing to apologize for, ma’am,” he said, giving her another kind, soft smile. “We appreciate your cooperation. If I have any more questions for you, I’ll be in touch.”

Becca stood and walked toward the door. As she reached it, she stopped and turned. “Those people,” she asked. “What did they do?”

“Ma’am?”

“If it’s something you can tell me without jeopardizing national security, I mean.” She said it as a joke, and instantly regretted it. What if it was? What if it did? What if she’d put herself on some sort of watch list now?

But the edges of his mouth shifted, like an amused man trying not to reveal the amusement. “That’s on a need to know basis,” he said, a smothered laugh in his voice.

“Oh,” she said.

He paused, and his face finally completely lost that blank, professional sheen. He leaned forward, his brow furrowed, his eyes soft and kind. “They didn’t do anything wrong,” he told her, “and as far as I can tell, neither have you. Have a good rest, Miss Norwood.”

She left him then – him poring over their records, and her poring over his words. Neither have you? What could she possibly have done? She’d lived the absolute most boring, blameless life. She’d never even gotten so much as a traffic ticket. Granted, she hadn’t driven a car since college, but still! 

She didn’t bother with changing into a nightgown, and just collapsed on top of her bed, still in her day clothes. She really was bone tired, she realized now that she gave herself a second to feel it. She managed to set her alarm, so she wouldn’t oversleep the memorial, but the second that was done, she tumbled into a deep and dreamless sleep.


	15. The Memorial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca goes to the memorial party, has a few short conversations, and kisses Dean again.

When her alarm went off, Becca was surprised to find herself completely awake, as if she’d gotten just the right amount of sleep. She’d read once, a long time ago, that as long as you managed to wake up between REM cycles, you would feel well rested. Maybe she’d managed that. Or maybe, as she thought more likely, the adrenaline from everything hadn’t quite worn off yet.

Not only was there somebody downstairs that she wanted to get to know better, there was also somebody downstairs who seemed to want to get to know the Inn better. Something was up. Something was going on. And until she knew exactly what that was, and exactly what was happening, Becca knew she’d never be able to let it go.

As she showered, she realized she felt guilty, for letting her mind stay on this same subject. She really ought to have been thinking about Mrs. Kettleman. That was what she was awake for in the first place. Remember Mrs. K, laugh and talk and reminisce. Mrs. Kettleman would have wanted them to celebrate her memory. And Becca felt absolutely guilty for feeling excited that she’d have a culturally acceptable excuse to spend public time with Dean. It wasn’t a date, it wasn’t breaking the rules, it was just polite chitchat at a friendly gathering.

She came out of her shower, wrapped in a towel, then sat at her mirror and took the time to braid her hair into a classy updo. It was her favorite hairstyle - it suited the oval shape of her face, and made her neck look longer. There wasn’t anything wrong with looking pretty today, she told herself. It would be expected, wouldn’t it? Nothing out of line there. A little bit of makeup wouldn’t hurt either.

She brushed on a delicate lavender eye shadow and put some mascara on her eyelashes. That would work. It was subtle, but it drew attention to her eyes. She sighed and once again felt guilty. Her intentions today were definitely not entirely honorable.

But her outfit could balance that out. She chose to wear her plum knee length sleeveless dress, and paired it with a soft, delicate scarf. There, she said as she studied herself in the mirror. Classy. Respectable. But also pretty.

As she descended the stairs, she wondered what she might have missed while she’d been out. Had anything new happened? Had Meg finished the cakes? What had Dean been up to? And what about the FBI agent? Had he gotten what he needed? Was he still here? Becca told herself that asking these questions was ridiculous. She would find out soon enough. And besides, did she have any control over any of these things? Why worry about things that were so far out of your control? It really was exhausting, this overthinking thing.

The first thing she noticed upon entering the lobby was Mother’s absence at the front desk. Instead, there was an event placard placed there, with an arrow pointing to the gardens. She hesitated. She had been headed to the kitchens, but maybe Meg had already finished preparing everything. It had been long enough, hadn’t it? Becca rolled her eyes at herself. Indecision was ridiculous. She turned and marched decidedly toward the patio out back.

As she stepped out into the autumn day, a light breeze caught at her scarf. She was suddenly very glad she’d chosen to wear it. The sun was out, and it was warm, but still, that wind. She heard the gentle strains of a violin drifting over the gardens, and when she looked, she saw Lisa Applebaum, at the center of a gathered crowd, playing what Becca soon placed as Beethoven. That was really nice of her. Lisa wasn’t one of the regulars. Becca wasn’t sure if she’d ever actually met Mrs. Kettleman before. But she was playing for them anyway. 

Becca saw Meg then, standing next to a table set with two partly-eaten cakes and a half-full punch bowl. Meg was wiping away a tear, but she was smiling. Truth be told, Becca was feeling exactly the same. The music was beautiful, but bittersweet – Mrs. Kettleman would have loved this, and her absence stung. Becca walked toward the table. “Good morning again,” Meg said. She gestured at the cakes. “What d’ya think?”

“Beautiful,” Becca said. “Thank you for finishing them for me.”

“Ah, you’ve got Dean more than me for that,” Meg said. “Even iced them for us, he did.”

Becca turned to where Meg had gestured, and there was Dean, standing next to Mother. Their faces were somber, and from the headshakes and nods Mother was giving him, Becca could tell he was asking her something. She wondered what it was. She wondered if it was about her. And then she told herself to stop wondering and answer the question Meg had just asked.

“I’m sorry,” Becca said. “What?”

“D’ya want some,” Meg asked again, holding up a small plate of chocolate cake. “It’s not a proper meal for waking up to, I know, but I thought y’ might like a slice.”

“Oh,” Becca said. “I---” Her voice cut off sharply when she saw Agent Manzarek talking with the Latterly sisters.

The look on Becca’s face must have been arresting, because Meg looked over immediately. “That one,” Meg said as she put the plate back down on the table. “He’s been buzzing around a bit for sure. What d’ya suppose he’s after?”

“Has he talked to you yet?”

“For a minute, but seeing as how I’ve only been here a short while, I couldn’t rightly help him.” Meg let out a little laugh. “Odd, though, isn’t it. An actual investigation on abouts, and he gives me three questions at most. But what I got from Dean there, lord love him, just question after question. I could hardly get breakfast done with him going on and on.”

“He did?” Becca bit her lip and tried not to sound so invested. Casually, she continued, “How so?”

“This and that, all sorts,” Meg said with a shrug. “Me, my family back home, the Inn. Come to think of it,” she said, giving Becca a bit of a side eye. “We did spend a fair bit of time talking about the Inn, and… well, you, honestly.”

Becca had to physically stop herself from lifting her hand to her mouth. “Oh? What… what about me?”

Meg laughed a little. “Y’ don’t have to worry. Hardly anything too personal, really. I didn’t notice it while we were talking. I’m only just now thinking back on it and remembering, he would keep bringing the conversation back round. It makes me wonder if he might have a---” She looked up and stiffened a bit. “Ah. I don’t wonder. He does.”

Becca followed Meg’s eyes and saw Dean looking at her. And oh dear Jesus, what a look. Like he’d just seen his first sunrise. 

“God,” Meg breathed. “Just once in my life I want a man to look at me like that. Just once, and I’ll die happy.”

Becca glanced guiltily at Mother and then turned back to face Meg. “I think I’d better have that cake,” she said, taking up the plate.

“Mmm,” Meg said distractedly. 

Becca had told herself, a thousand times before, that jealousy was a stupid emotion. But looking at Meg – sweet, beautiful, youthful Meg, with that swoony look in her doe-brown eyes – Becca felt another jealous bite. “He’s a guest,” she said, and the bite was present in her words.

Meg looked at her, and there was a touch of injury in her eyes. “I know. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a work of art. It wouldn’t amount to much if I could do other,” she said with a tiny sigh. “It’s you he’s walking to now.”

Becca forced herself to take a deep, calming breath. It was ridiculous, how much of an effect he still had on her. Shouldn’t she be over this by now? But then, when he came up to them, and all he’d said was “Hey,” and even so, every hair on her arms stood straight upright… She didn’t think she’d ever be over it. 

“Cake?” she asked, and she held him her untouched slice.

“You don’t have to ask me twice,” he said, and he took it from her.

For a second there, the silence between them was filled with Lisa Applebaum’s music, and then she reached the end of her piece. In the applause that followed, Becca served herself a glass of punch. She shook her head at Meg, who was glancing back and forth between Becca and Dean with something akin to eagerness, as if she was just waiting to see what was going to happen. For fuck’s sake, she thought, please don’t make this awkward.

“So,” Dean said. He took a bite of cake.

Whatever he’d been about to say got caught in his throat as Meg darted out from behind the table and ran to the man just coming into the gardens from the side entrance. She leapt into his crushing embrace, and he swung her around.

“That her boyfriend?” Dean asked, gesturing at them with his fork. Was Becca imagining it, or was that a note of relief in his voice? 

“No, that’s David,” Becca said. “Matt should be--- there he is.” She smiled over at them, now in a group hug with Meg. She could tell David was crying, and Matt had his face buried in Meg’s shoulder, his eyeglasses held loosely in the hand by his side. Seeing that, knowing exactly what they were feeling, brought tears to Becca’s eyes too. She put one hand over her mouth, holding everything back.

“Hey,” Dean said, and he moved toward her. 

Becca laughed a little then, and she could hardly tell why she had. She looked up at Dean, and at the concern in his beautiful eyes, and she laughed again, louder this time, even almost bordering on obnoxiously. What was going on with her? What was happening right now? She looked around, and saw the gathered crowd, and saw Mother, looking over at her, and it was just too much. Everything was too much. She couldn’t be here. She absolutely couldn’t be here anymore.

She took a step toward the Inn, remembered the cup in her hand, put the punch down on the table, and then made a break for it. Graceful exit, it was not. But she needed a minute, just a minute to herself.

She followed her impulses where they led her. Through the empty Inn, down the empty hall, to stand outside the door to room eight. Becca rested her forehead against the wood and let the tears fall. “I’ll miss you,” she said. “I’ll miss you forever.”

“Hey,” she heard Dean say. 

She spun away from him and wiped at her face. “I need a minute,” she said, her voice breaking. God damn it, this was embarrassing.

“Hey,” he said again, softly, and then his hand was at her elbow.

Becca laughed again, a frustrated unstoppable laugh, and she shook her head. “I need a minute,” she repeated. “Why did you follow me?”

There was another pause. His hand was still on her elbow, and she swung around to face him. His jaw was working, something was going on inside that head of his, and then, as she stared at him, he almost whispered, “I don’t know.” He leaned in toward her, and in that same low voice, said, “Here’s to making bad decisions.”

And then he kissed her. Soft, and slow, and deep. Her breath caught as he pulled her to him. This kiss felt different from their first, although she couldn’t make sense of why. She couldn’t make sense of much of anything. Everything else was gone, replaced by the overwhelming urge to be held closer, to be kissed longer.

When his phone went off in his pocket, he ignored it at first. But when it stopped, there was only the briefest of pauses before it started buzzing again. He sighed as he pulled back from her. He brushed his fingers along her cheek, and then stepped back to answer his phone.

“What,” he said, and as he listened to the person on the other end, his face went blank and dark. “No. Absolutely not. And you tell Sam to keep his big nose out of my business.” He clicked the phone shut, angrily enough that Becca felt uneasy. He sighed again and looked over at her. “You, ah… Take all the time you need. I’ll just… be out there.”

And then he was gone, leaving Becca confused and wanting.


	16. The Complication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doug shows up unexpectedly, to support Becca through Mrs. K's memorial.

She stood alone in the empty hallway, and her legs swayed beneath her. She leaned against the wall and shut her eyes. He really didn’t make anything easy, did he. Why, that was what she wanted to know. Why did he leave her, if he’d kissed her like that? Why did he keep going between hot and cold so quickly? It was so incredibly frustrating.

Give up on him, she told herself. He’s not consistent. He’s not safe.

But then she remembered how it had felt to have his mouth on hers, and the heat of his breath, and the taste of his lips. She didn’t want to give up on that. Maybe it was stupid. Hell, she thought, it definitely was. But there was something absolutely compelling about him, and she didn’t, couldn’t, let that go. Not just yet.

She straightened her shoulders and shook herself out. She could handle this. She could get through this day. And you know what, she thought to herself as she made her way back toward the lobby. She could give as good as she got.

Becca was so lost in her own thoughts that she didn’t hear the main doors open behind her until she heard, “Hey there, darlin’.” She startled a bit, hating herself for jumping even as it happened.

She’d known his voice instantly, but when she turned to face him, she had to do a doubletake. “Doug?” He’d shaved off his beard. She could see his chin. She could see his dimples! He’d never done that in autumn before – as it usually happened, he gave up his winter fuzz at the start of baseball season in the spring.

“Get on in here,” he said, and he took her up in a hug. “How you holdin’ up?”

“As well as can be expected,” Becca said. He was wearing cologne too, she realized. She pulled back and looked up at him. “How are you doing?”

“Fair to middlin’,” he said.

“So this,” she said, touching her own chin. “That’s fair to middling? You’re not going through something we should know about?” she teased.

He laughed, but his eyes looked away from hers. “Felt like a change, is all.”

“Hmm,” Becca said. She didn’t quite believe him, but then again, whatever he wanted to do with his own facial hair, that was his business. “Did you come up for the memorial party?” 

He turned back to her with a smile but shook his head. “Nope. Tell you the truth, I didn’t know there was a party going on ‘til I saw that sign over yonder. I heard about what happened yesterday, and I got Pete to give me the afternoon off. Thought you could use a friend.”

“You’re the best, Doug.” Despite herself, Becca felt a tear of gratitude forming in her eyes. She blinked that away and hugged him again. “Thank you for coming today. You didn’t have to.”

Doug laughed then, a quiet humble laugh. “Y’know somethin’,” he said. “It’s funny. I’m tryin’ my darndest here, and I can’t think of one single day when you didn’t tell me that at some time or ‘nother.”

“Thank you?” Becca put a hand to her chest and feigned insult. “I, sir, am always kind and polite, thank you very much.”

He chuckled and elbowed her. “No arguin’ from me on that one, darlin’. But tell me truly now,” he said, and he tilted his head to one side. “Do you not hear it when you say it?”

“Say what?” Becca shook her head at him. “Go back a step. I’ve missed something.”

“Only you,” he rolled his eyes at her, “would compliment a fella and not realize you’ve done it.”

“Oh,” she said, thinking back on it. He was right. She’d said it almost as a reflex. Well. Now she’d say it deliberately. “You are the best, Doug,” she said. “You’re losing hours and tips besides, and you’re here.”

“Money don’t matter much,” he said with a shrug. “Not where it counts. That, and I told Pete I’d cover a double shift Saturday.”

“Oh, well, that explains it.” Becca pointed to the back patio. “Come have some cake?”

“Lead the way,” he said.

When they walked onto the back patio, Lisa Applebaum was playing another piece. Becca didn’t recognize this one, but it was low and sweeping, and Meg was crying again. “Don’t mind me,” Meg said when she noticed Becca’s concern. “Sometimes things are too pretty to stand.” She wiped away her tear and gave Doug a friendly smile. “Speaking of, have we met?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t believe we have. Doug Bennett,” he said, offering her his hand.

“Lovely to meet y’, Doug,” Meg said. “Meg Denholm.” As she shook his hand, she put her other hand up to her mouth, blocking Doug’s view of it, and mouthed something over to Becca. She couldn’t be sure, but Becca thought she had seen Meg shape the words “god” and “gorgeous.”

Becca’s laugh turned into a snort turned into her clearing her throat. It wasn’t the world’s smoothest cover-up, but it did its best. “Meg’s been working with us for, going on two years now, isn’t it?”

“Just about,” Meg replied. “And what is it y’ do yourself, Doug?”

“I tend bar in town,” he answered. “At O’Reilly’s.”

“Oh, that’s lovely. I’ve got a brother back home works in a pub. Would y’ care for a slice of cake, bartender Doug?”

“Yes, ma’am, thank you kindly.”

“Lord bless me,” Meg whispered to Becca as she cut a new slice of the rapidly dwindling chocolate cake. “I’ve got to get m’self down to town more often. That, or y’ need to get him to come up here. Lord bless me,” she repeated.

Becca glanced up at Doug, but he, to his credit, was either actively listening to Lisa Applebaum’s superb playing, or pretending gamely not to listen to Meg’s breathless whispers. He did look handsome, she had to admit. He’d combed his black hair down, parted over from the right, and the red plaid he had chosen to wear today accentuated his biceps beautifully. Small wonder Meg was having such a reaction.

Becca wondered then, why was it she hadn’t immediately recognized how handsome Doug looked today? Why was it she’d completely disregarded it until Meg had brought it up? Even before her mind had fully formed the question, it already had the answer for her.

You think too much about Dean.

At that, Becca scanned the grounds for him. Where was he? He wasn’t in that group of guests in the folding chairs. He wasn’t over in the group by Lisa Applebaum. Mother was talking to the FBI agent, and--- Becca bit the inside of her cheek, hard enough that she feared she may have drawn blood.

Good lord, she thought, what an intimidating man. Agent Manzarek was talking to Mother, a pencil and notebook in his hands, but he was glaring off to the side, and when she followed where his eyes were looking---

GOOD LORD, she thought again, when she saw Dean. It was sheer force of will that kept her from falling backward into the cake tables. If a look could shoot ice at a person, that was what was happening now. Even from this distance she could tell his jaw was working, and oh good lord, those eyes were shooting daggers at Doug.

“You see him too, huh?” Doug said nonchalantly as he took a bite of cake. “Who put the salt in his cornflakes?”

Becca knew full well the answer to that question. Instead of answering it, she said, “How are you so cool about it? I’d be dead if somebody looked at me like that.” Especially if Dean looked at her like that. Her spine tingled just thinking about it.

“He’s been starin’ like that since we got out here,” Doug said with a little shrug. “Ain’t no skin off my nose. But…” He looked at her then, his dark eyes full of concern. “You gonna be okay with him, here?”

“You really are a good guy, you know that?” Without thinking she put her hand on Doug’s forearm. From the side of her eye, she saw Dean stiffen up. She took in a long breath and met Doug’s eyes. “I’m fine. He’s just an ass.”

“I dunno,” Doug said. He picked at the cake on his plate with his fork, but didn’t actually take another bite. “Something ‘bout that one just don’t sit right. Course, I could just be thinkin’ that ‘cause of how he’s lookin’ over this way. Could be mostly hot air, but you never can tell with them drifter types.”

Becca felt sad, and frustrated, and irritated, and confused. How one man could make such a muddle of her emotions! It was infuriating. It was toxic, that’s what it was. She pressed her lips tightly together and exhaled through her nose.

Matt came up to the table then, to refill his and David’s punches, and Becca was instantly glad to have something else to focus on. “Doug,” he said, putting the empty cups down next to the punch bowl. “Good to see you!”

“Back atcha, buddy,” Doug said as they shook hands. “Sure wish it were under better circumstances.”

Matt sighed and took off his glasses. He cleaned them with the hem of his shirt, looking down at the ground. “For what it’s worth,” he said, and he looked up under his eyelashes at Becca, “this was a really nice idea. Mrs. K would’ve liked it. Your mother has some good stories about her, too.”

“I’m glad,” Becca said. “I was worried it was a little too much party and not enough memorial.”

“Most of these people didn’t know her,” Matt said as he replaced the glasses on his face. “I don’t blame them, of course, but they’re definitely just here for the cake. Which is excellent, by the way. David’s a huge fan.” He pointed over at David, who was talking with Mother now, holding a half-eaten slice of cake. Matt leaned in, and conspiratorially whispered, “That’s his third piece. Don’t you dare tell him I was counting.”

“I would never,” Becca said, laughing a little. “The betrayal!”

Matt swept her up in a hug. “I mean it,” he said, and she could hear a quiet quaver in his voice. “This was a really nice idea. I’m glad I have good memories to look back on. It’s like she’s still here with us.”

He looked up then and saw Meg. She had stepped away from the table, and was listening quietly to the somber violin, weeping silently into her hands. “Oh, sweetheart,” Matt said, walking over to her. “You must be going through it today.”

Meg turned at his approach and fell into his arms. She sobbed into his shoulder, saying something that Becca couldn’t quite make out. Matt wrapped his arms around her and patted her head, cooing reassurances.

Once again, it hit Becca just how much was wrong. How much Meg was going through. How Meg had been the one to find her. A lump rose in her throat, and she bit her lip.

“Hey, darlin’,” Doug said, and he put his hand on her elbow. “You all right?”

Becca’s eyes widened. His hand at her elbow conjured another memory, and with it a wash of conflicting emotions - anger and frustration and sadness and the knowledge that everything was ridiculous, everything was wrong and stupid and why did everything have to be so difficult? He hadn’t come up to her since she’d come back outside. He’d turned off like a faucet. And he had the gall to act jealous now. Like he didn’t want her, but he didn’t want to see her with anybody else. She let out a sob that turned into a growl as she bit it back. “I’m fine,” she said, determined to shake off whatever this fresh bullshit was.

“Like hell you are,” Doug said. His voice was so gentle, so kind, and it shouldn’t have pissed her off, but it did.

“I’m fine,” she repeated angrily. She looked up at him, at the concern in those dark eyes, and she sighed. “No. No, I’m not, am I.”

“If you need a shoulder,” Doug said, “you’ve always got one here.”

Becca sighed and smiled at him. “Thanks, Doug. I know.”

“Now, come on,” he said, and he gave her a quick hug. “Let’s go talk to some folks. Get some good stories goin’. Make some memories.”

Becca hugged him back, smiling now, and glad about it. This now, this comfort, this was something she would prefer to feel. It was so easy to be friends with Doug. So, so easy.

If only everything could be like that. She sighed.


	17. The Gossip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca spends some time talking with the guests at the memorial, leading up to a confrontation with Agent Manzarek.

A few stories later, Becca was smiling again. It was amazing the effect thinking back on happier times had. Matt and David had shared how, a few years ago, they’d found Mrs. Kettleman playing hide and seek beneath the shrubberies, waiting for the Nelson girls to find her. Mother had told them all about the year Mrs. Kettleman had decided to learn how to knit, determined but incredibly unskilled, and they’d ended up having to cut her free from her own tangles. And now Becca was nearing the end of her own story, the year Mrs. K had brought matching rollerblades for her and Charlie.

“I was good at it. Better than Charlie, even. I swear I was!”

“Hmm,” Mother said, taking a sip of her punch. “I seem to recall a trip down the stairs that tells another story.”

“Hold on there a minute,” Doug said. “Was that the same year---”

“I broke my leg, yes. Completely coincidental.”

“Another coincidence, that rule banning rollerblades from my Inn,” Mother said, smiling a little and shaking her head at Becca.

“Think maybe it’s like ridin’ a bike?” Doug asked. “Like you could recollect how?”

Becca thought about it for a second, then shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

He gave her a little smirk. “That’s Christmas figured, then.”

Becca laughed. “You’re not supposed to tell people what you get them.”

Doug shared the laugh, then gave her a little shrug. “Never could keep a secret, I guess.”

Mother finished her punch and looked over at the Inn. “This was lovely, girls,” she told Meg and Becca. “Thank you for all your hard work. You’ve got some more time you can spend out here if you’d like, but I’d better be getting back to work myself.” With that, she left their tiny circle and went back inside.

Becca had barely half a second to think about that, because almost as soon as Mother had gone, Sadie Latterly had taken her spot. “Beautiful day. Lovely party. That violinist is so talented. Did you know there’s a man from the FBI here?”

The group didn’t respond right away. Matt and David exchanged a glance between them, full of a private message with a meaning that Becca could only guess at. Doug just looked lost, and he was glancing about at the guests, trying to guess which person Sadie must have meant. Becca almost replied to her, but then overthought all the myriad ways Mother would have wanted her to respond to that. It wasn’t their fault, none of it was, but it certainly wasn’t a good look, to have an open FBI investigation taking place. Meg was the first to react. “Is there?” she said, casually. Becca sighed a little, relieved. She could always count on Meg to hold it together when it mattered.

Sadie leaned in, her pale blue eyes twinkling with mischief. “He’s that tall one over there talking with Mabel.”

All of them looked over, to where Agent Manzarek stood, his back to the rhododendrons, listening to whatever the other Miss Latterly was going on about. Whatever it was, it must have been something else, Becca thought, judging by that particular expression on the agent’s face. It wasn’t open desperation, but beneath his polite nods, there was definitely a hint of frustration.

“He’s really very nice, not at all what I expected a man in his profession to be,” Sadie continued. “He had his questions, you know, but just look at him, actually socializing like a human being. I was quite taken with him, I can tell you, but she played paper and I played rock.” Sadie sighed.

“What did he---” Becca spoke before she could stop herself. She bit the inside of her cheek. That wasn’t her place. It could draw attention where it didn’t need to be. Really, she should be trying to diffuse this situation. Why couldn’t she think of how? Why couldn’t she, just for once in her life, actually be smart about something?

Sadie, thank god, didn’t seem to notice that Becca had even spoken. She just kept right on with her own thought. “I never do win at that game, you know. It’s enough to make you wonder if she cheats somehow.” She turned back to the group. “Have any of you talked with him yet?”

There was a short chorus of no’s from the men. Meg – who, Becca noticed, hadn’t actually answered - looked away, toward Lisa Applebaum, who was drawing yet another brilliant piece to a flourishing close. “Begging your pardon,” she said, and she stepped away from the group, walking toward Lisa. 

Sadie watched her go for half a second and then turned back. “It makes me wonder just why he’s here,” she said. “Nobody seems to know anything.”

At that, Becca just shook her head. “He didn’t give me much.”

Sadie turned to her, with her mouth open in a wide o. “You spoke to him? Why didn’t you say so? What did he ask you about?”

Becca bit her lip. Damn it, she thought. “Nothing, really,” she shrugged in an attempt to lighten the topic. “It was hardly a conversation. He caught me just as I was heading to bed.”

“Lucky girl,” Sadie sighed again, melodramatically.

Becca let out a short, sharp laugh. Lucky? To be under investigation by the FBI? “If you’re into that,” she said.

“How could you not be?” Sadie lifted up one hand to her throat. “That voice, that face, and oh, would you just look at how TALL he is.”

“She’s got you there,” David said. Matt turned to him, his head tilted sideways, and David said, “What? She’s got a point, that’s all.”

Becca didn’t think it was all that great a point. Yes, Agent Manzarek had a nice voice. And yes, arguably, he had a nice face. His nose had a point to it in profile that it didn’t have when you looked at him head on, and she still wasn’t quite sold on his preference in sideburns, but she could agree, objectively, that he was a handsome man. Still, none of that changed the fact that he was here, in her home, asking questions for some reason that he hadn’t felt the need to explain. It didn’t matter how handsome he was, not with that hanging over everything.

“I wish we’d been able to help him,” Sadie sighed again. “But we’ve only been here the once before, you know, that was right after Mabel got divorced. Good riddance to bad rubbish, of course, but even still, she was, truth be told, heartbroken over it. She’d needed the vacation, and we chose well, in my mind. We told him all about this place, what a joy it is to stay here in the Inn, but it’s just a shame, that wasn’t what he was looking to hear. I’m not the busybody type, you know, lord knows I’m the furthest thing from it, so I really couldn’t help when he asked if I knew whoever those people were, and I don’t know a thing about the history of the Inn.” She paused to take a breath and looked over at Becca. “You would, I imagine. What did you tell him when he asked you?”

“When he asked me what?”

“About it being such an old building, and…” she trailed off and waved one of her hands in an “and so on” kind of gesture. “Well, of course I talked about poor Mrs. Kettleman. She was here that year we came for Mabel, you know, and she talked her down from quite a few metaphorical ledges then. The dear sweet lady, it really was in her nature to love people. But she’s the only one I could name, myself. I suppose, with this building being very old, she couldn’t have been the only one?”

“Wait,” Becca said. “What exactly did he ask you?”

“If I knew of any other times a person might have passed on,” Sadie said, as casually and carelessly as if she were merely discussing the weather and not something as heavy as death. “I told him, I said, ‘Well, it wouldn’t surprise me, Summerview being such a very old building.’ You can hardly walk into a building in Europe where somebody hasn’t, you know, and that’s simply because of the age of the place. It’s only natural. And that’s what I told him.”

Becca looked over at the agent again. What was he doing here? What the hell kind of question was that? Was he accusing them of something? He’d said he wasn’t, but if he wasn’t, what the hell was he doing? She could feel her questions turning circular, and she could feel herself growing irritated with it, and then, when he looked over and their eyes met, she made a decision.

“Thank you, Miss Latterly,” Becca said. “I’m sure you did just right.” She patted the woman’s shoulder as she walked past her and headed over toward the agent.

The other Miss Latterly was clearly still in the middle of what must have been a fascinating story, but Becca didn’t want to wait for her to finish. “Excuse me,” she said, interrupting her. “I’m sorry to bother you. Could I speak with you a moment, Agent?”

She didn’t think his lips could go any thinner, but there they did. “Of course,” he said, and she was surprised how friendly his voice could sound despite that expression. She’d almost call it resting bitch face, the way he was looking at her. “Excuse me,” he said, and he tried to get past Mabel Latterly. He didn’t quite clear the rhododendrons, and the leaves rustled loudly as he squeezed by, but then he and Becca were far enough away from the rest of the guests.

“Do I need a lawyer,” Becca asked. She realized she’d put her hands on her hips, and she dropped them immediately.

“Ma’am?”

“Just tell me, please,” Becca said. “I can’t think of a single reason why you’d be asking my guests – my GUESTS – questions like what you’ve been asking, unless you think we’re up to something.” She could hardly believe she was speaking this way, but now that she’d started the ball rolling, she couldn’t seem to stop. “What is it? What have we done?” She was angry now, and on the verge of tears. He looked startled, and she was glad for that. At least he wasn’t stone. At least she could maybe get a real answer out of him. “What are you accusing us of?”

His mouth fell open, and he searched for words. “I’m not,” he said. “Really, I’m not.”

“Why do you care about who’s died here, then? Why? Because I am just wracking my brains and the only answer I can come up with is you think we’re H. H. Holmes or something.” There, now, she felt one warm, angry tear escape the hold she had on it and trickle down her right cheek. For fuck’s sake, she thought, and she slapped her hand to her face and dragged the tear away. “We’re not. And we wouldn’t. And how dare you think we would. If I need a lawyer, I really need you to tell me because this whole ‘mystery’ thing is getting really tired.”

“Wow,” he said, and the way he said it… Surprised, definitely, but also, maybe, a little bit of awe? She didn’t know exactly what that meant. It definitely didn’t feel right, coming from an FBI agent. She looked at him, feeling very confused. He shook his head a little, almost as if to clear it from confusion himself, and then met her eyes. “I know how this must seem. Believe me, I understand. Better than most. But no, Miss Norwood. You don’t need a lawyer.” He sighed a little then, and his whole face seemed to soften. “You might need something else, though.”


	18. The Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca answers more questions, and gets assurance that Agent Manzarek will stop bothering the guests.

“What does that mean?” Becca waved her hands in front of her, palm upward. Give me something. Give me anything. 

Agent Manzarek looked at her then, and for some reason – she really couldn’t think of a single reason why - the side of his mouth turned up into a smile. “You…” he looked down at her, and his brow furrowed as he thought. She could see him waging the debate with himself, deciding how much he should say, what exactly to tell her.

“Why is this happening to me?” Becca laughed, shaking her head. “Why, why now, does everybody feel the need to lie to me? You won’t tell me what you’re thinking. HE won’t tell me what he’s thinking. My mother’s not telling me something too, let’s just add that to the list while I’m at it. I’m drowning, and not one of you people will throw me a life raft. Just…” She took in a shaky breath. “Just make something make sense. Please.”

His soft hazel eyes stared at her for a second, and his shoulders seemed to slump a little. How could he do that, she wondered. How could he do that with his eyes? With nothing more than an expression, his entire aura had gone gentle and disarming, and despite herself, she felt instantly like she would forgive him anything. Maybe it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t tell her things. Maybe things were legitimately classified, and he was held to a departmental standard. What the hell, she thought, how could he make her feel like that, and how could he make it happen so quickly?

“I can’t explain a lot,” he finally said. “I’m sorry for that. But I promise, we’re working on it. And I promise, it’s going to be fine. Really. We’re going to make sure of that.”

“I…” she shook her head in disbelief. That shouldn’t have been reassuring. He literally hadn’t told her anything new. But somehow, she was completely reassured. What was it about him? “Okay. Let’s say I believe you. Are you done talking with my guests now? I’d really like to keep the Inn up and running. Some of these people like to talk, if you hadn’t noticed.”

He grimaced, then, and glanced over to where the Latterly sisters were huddled together, whispering to each other and staring over his way. “Yeah,” he said distractedly. “There’s that.” He looked back to her and gave her a little smile. “I’m sorry about that too. I didn’t mean to get the rumor mill started. But I didn’t think it would be right to ask you about… that.”

“Sadie Latterly said you’d asked her if…”

“I did. We had a few history questions. But we know about what happened to your family,” he said gently. “When you were three, I mean. I didn’t think it would be right to make you talk about it.”

Becca found herself smiling up at him then. There was something truly genuine about this one, wasn’t there. “That was… that was really nice of you. It’s been long enough, and I can talk about it now, really I can. But thank you. For looking out for me, I mean. You didn’t have to do that.”

“If it’s all right,” he said, and oh my god how was his voice so velvet? “I do have one more question for you.”

“It’s all right,” she said. Hit me, she thought. Bring it on. Was it adrenaline? Was it a side effect of the waves of reassurance she was getting from talking with him? Whatever it was, she felt like she could take on the world.

“Is there anything you can remember about Mrs. Kettleman, and the day she died? Was she acting strange? Was there anything unusual?”

Becca blinked at him. “One more question, I thought?”

He laughed a little, lightly, almost like a scoff but lacking the sarcasm, and said, “Yes, ma’am. I guess it’s one question with multiple parts. Anything you can remember would be a huge help. Anything at all.”

“Well…” Becca paused and thought back on it. That was the day she’d gone with Dean to O’Reilly’s. Damn it, none of that was relevant to this question, and yet right now her brain was stuck on that particular part of the day. She shoved those moments aside, shuffling through the memories in her mind like hangers in a closet. Mrs. Kettleman. Nothing at all had seemed out of sorts about her, when Becca had come back inside after that incident she was deliberately trying not to dwell on. She’d been happy, and she’d been excited, and she’d been just the same as she’d always been. “I can’t really remember anything strange or unusual,” she finally told him. “I was going to bed, and she caught me up a little bit on what was going on with her family. We didn’t talk much, because I’d been awake for so long at that point. My schedule. She let me go upstairs and she said she’d see me later.” Becca’s voice quavered. Saying that aloud, that got to her, then. The plans they’d made, they were the most everyday non-important plans, and yet she hadn’t gotten to follow through with them. The realization of all those moments she would never have hit her all at once. She cleared her throat and pulled herself together. “That was it, really.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Nothing else?”

Becca gave him a little shrug, without thinking about it. “She took a nap that day. That was unlike her. But… given what happened afterward... it would make sense if she was feeling tired, right?”

“She was seventy-six, right?” Agent Manzarek seemed to be doing some sort of math in his head, but for the life of her, Becca couldn’t think what calculations he was making.

“Seventy-seven,” Becca corrected him. “Almost seventy-eight.”

“Taking a nap during the day, that’s not too unusual for people that age,” he said.

“True,” Becca agreed. “But still. You never met Mrs. K. And I’m pretty sure if you had, you’d understand why I think it’s strange enough to mention now. I can’t remember that woman taking a nap during the day, not once. We only saw her once a year, but I’ve known her my entire life. She had so much energy! More than me, sometimes. And that’s how she was when I saw her this year too. That’s who she was. So, yes, her taking a nap, that was definitely unusual for her.”

“Hmm,” the agent said. He looked at her then, and he said, “Did…” his voice trailed off, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask her that. 

“What?”

“I was just thinking,” he said. There was a pause, as he gathered his words in his mind. “When your father… Did that happen with him?”

“I don’t know,” Becca said, feeling confused and concerned again. How was that relevant? “Why would it have?” Her eyes widened as a thought came to her. “Do you think we could have a carbon monoxide leak?”

“No,” Agent Manzarek said. He was clearly thinking about something else, because when he said, “I checked your detectors, and they’re all functioning,” it didn’t seem like he’d actually intended to reveal that little detail. His eyes went bright as he realized what he’d said, and he focused his attention back on her again. “Thank you for your assistance, again,” he said. 

Becca sighed. She hadn’t gotten much from this conversation, and now she was going to have to doublecheck the detectors herself, just to set her own mind at ease. But at least it felt a little bit like an ending, like maybe he was done and he was going to leave soon. Maybe she wouldn’t have to worry about this for very much longer. “Are you going to be needing anything else,” she asked, “and if so, I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job or anything, but like I said, it’s really causing some issues. Could you please come to me or Mother instead of bothering the guests with it?”

He sighed then, too, and very gently nodded his head. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “If I have any further questions, I’ll come to you.” He looked up then, at something behind her, and his mouth went thin again. “Thank you again for your time, Miss Norwood.” He gave her a tiny goodbye nod and walked past her.

She turned and wondered what he’d seen that had made him make that face. She didn’t see anything out of place now. Maybe she hadn’t turned quickly enough. But at this point, Agent Manzarek was walking toward the Inn, steadily and with some purpose. Becca glanced around at the gardens, saw that everything out here seemed to be proceeding perfectly normally, and then looked back as the agent entered the Inn.

Then, she made a decision that she couldn’t quite explain herself. She followed him.


	19. The Checkout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Frankel family checks out a day early, prompting a search for a wayward doll.

As Becca entered the lobby, she didn’t see Agent Manzarek, and she couldn’t tell right away where he had gone. What she did see, however, was chaos incarnate. At least a dozen suitcases in one big pile, four adults trying to corral seven rambunctious children, and Mother at the desk looking honestly somewhat frazzled. The Frankel family was checking out.

“Sweetheart,” Mother said when she saw her. “Thank goodness. Could you please help Mr. Frankel with the bags? Meg’s busy with room three or I’d ask her.”

“Of course,” Becca answered. She didn’t want to. She wanted to find out where Agent Manzarek had been headed, with that particular expression on his face. But there’s want, and then there’s duty.

Isn’t that always the god damn way.

Becca took up two of the suitcases and followed Mr. Frankel, who had two shoulder bags around his neck and was pulling two rolling suitcases behind him. Her anxiety started to prickle at her nerves. What day was it? Wasn’t this only Thursday? She tried to think. Had she lost track of the days? Was today Friday? Or, as she was beginning to really suspect was the case, was the Frankel family checking out a day early?

As they went out into the parking lot, they walked up to the first of two minivans that had been pulled up in front of the Inn. “Thanks for the cake,” Mr. Frankel said as he shoved his shoulder bags into the trunk of the minivan in front. “Now for eleven hours in an enclosed space.” His tone was sarcastic, but also he was smiling a little. That seemed like a good sign.

“I hope you enjoyed your stay with us,” Becca said as she handed him one of the suitcases.

“Oh sure, sure,” he said, only partly paying attention to the conversation. The other half of his mind was focused on creating the Tetris block that would let all of their luggage fit in their trunk. He made a decision and crammed the suitcase over to one side. It just barely fit, and Becca could tell he was really proud of himself for managing that. “That’s it for this one,” he said. “Let’s try the other.”

Becca followed him to the second minivan and helped him load the other suitcase she’d carried out. “Thanks,” he told her again. He turned back to the Inn for more bags, doing a little half-jog as he went.

“Honey,” Mrs. Frankel said as they went back into the lobby. Her face was not quite frantic, but definitely straddling the border of it. She was pacing back and forth, doing her best to console her crying toddler. “Could you go look in the rooms one last time? We can’t find Mister Panda. Shh, shh, Kimmy, baby, it’s okay, we’ll find Mister Panda, we’ll find him.”

“I’ll go look,” Becca offered.

“That’d be great,” Mr. Frankel said as he hoisted up two more suitcases. “He’s a rag doll, almost two feet long, you can’t miss him. Freddy, help me out here, would you?”

“In a second,” the other Mr. Frankel, who was standing at the front desk, talking to Mother. The last thing Becca heard before she went down the hall toward the guest rooms, beneath Kimmy Frankel’s cranky wails, was his question, “So can you help us out with this or what?”

When Becca reached room three, the door was standing open. Meg was inside, gathering up the bedding and putting it into the laundry cart. “What a right to-do,” she said as she saw Becca. “Shouldn’ve had to do this for another day yet.”

“It IS Thursday, isn’t it,” Becca said. She bit her lip and came into the room. “That’s what I thought.”

“I wonder what’s got them in the mind for going now,” Meg said, shaking out the top sheet and folding it over itself. “I would’ve thought if they’d go early it would have been yesterday, wouldn’t y’ think? And now I’ve got three rooms to see to, three, AND clearing up outside here in a bit.”

“You haven’t seen a doll in here, have you,” Becca asked. She lowered herself to her knees to look under the bed. Nothing there. She sighed and twisted to look under the bedside table. Nothing there either.

“A doll?” Meg stopped folding the cover for a second. “I haven’t, no. What sort of doll?”

“His name is Mister Panda,” Becca answered, crawling a few paces to peer under the dresser. Nothing but shadows, just as it should be. “Mr. Frankel said it was a long rag doll.”

“The nice Mr. Frankel or that other one?” Meg asked offhandedly as she tossed the folded sheet into the bedding cart.

“What do you mean?” Becca straightened and looked up pointedly at Meg. They’d blacklisted guests before, and if by “that other one” she meant he’d done anything too far out of line, they would do it again, no hesitation.

“Oh, nothing too bad,” Meg said reassuringly – and Becca wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe there was a hint of gratitude there too. “He wasn’t outright rude, y’ needn’t worry about that, just that the one Mr. Frankel would keep thanking me, and then the other hasn’t said word one. Feels almost like being put in a servant’s place. D’ya know what I mean to say? There’s a difference between employee and servant, and sometimes y’ feel it more strongly than other times.” She reached for the fitted sheet and began pulling it off of the mattress. “They’re a nice family, truly. The children, too. Loud, and so busy, but nice overall.”

“They are. I hope we find that doll,” Becca said as she got up on her feet. She could still hear, even from this distance, how upset Kimmy was at losing him. “I don’t think he’s in here. Could you put that down for a second and help me look? They’re trying to get on the road, and I could use the extra eyes.”

“Lord love a duck, I didn’t even think,” Meg said, dropping the bedclothes in a pile on the bare mattress. “Watch me get set in my path and lose all sense of perspective. I can take four if y’ look through five?”

“Sounds good,” Becca said. “Thank you.”

It would’ve been a little easier to search if the Frankels hadn’t been quite such a large family. But honestly, even with three rooms to go over, Becca envied them a little. Her family had always been small. No cousins to speak of, no aunts or uncles, and her grandparents were long passed on. As it stood now, it was just the three of them – Mother, Charlie, and Becca. In the back of her head, Becca wondered if maybe it wasn’t time to start thinking about expanding the family a little. Charlie, certainly, wasn’t thinking about it at the moment, not with all his attention going to the BVB. Did that really mean the onus was on her to carry on the family genes? And even if she wanted to, she’d have to find a partner first. A good one. A reliable one. Not just pretty. Not just exciting. She didn’t like the direction her thoughts were going now, not at all.

With her mind so far and away, she walked into room five, expecting nothing to be out of the ordinary. That was the major contributing factor to the way she almost yelped when, suddenly, Dean’s head popped up from behind the other side of the bed. “Hey there,” he said, and he gave her that same exhausting, infuriating, unbelievably charming grin she’d come to expect from him. “How’s it going?”

Becca had so many questions she couldn’t chose one to start with. She was literally at a loss for words. He was, once again, in a room where he wasn’t supposed to be. She’d talked to him about this. She’d warned him. “Dean…”

“Found it,” he said, and he lifted a rag doll up into view. It took her a second to register just what that lump of black and white was. He stood up and came out from around the bed. “Guess I’d better get this back to her, yeah?” And then he was gone.

She stared at the empty doorway for a second, letting her scattered thoughts catch up to her. Had they asked him to help look? When had that happened? But he hadn’t been in the wrong if he was helping look for the doll. So, he hadn’t been somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. Had he?

For fuck’s sake, Becca thought as she sank down on the edge of the bed. Why did he do this to her? Why, every single time they met, did he send her mind reeling like this? She lowered her chin into her hands and sighed. Life didn’t have to be complicated. Other people didn’t find themselves thinking this much. Why couldn’t she just be normal?

She had been normal once. Her life had been normal. It had been so easy, and she hadn’t had to think about anything. She’d had a routine, and she was comfortable. Why in the hell had one new guest thrown such a wrench into the rhythm of her life?

She got up and made her way to the doorway. There was no sense in letting Meg keep searching room four if Mister Panda had already been found. When she got there, she found Meg in the hallway as well, talking to Agent Manzarek.

“---much appreciated,” Meg was saying.

“Of course,” the agent replied. “It was the least I could do. If there’s anything else I can help with, just let me know.” He looked up and met Becca’s eyes. He nodded at her, and said, “Miss Norwood.” And then he walked back out toward the lobby.

“What was that,” Becca asked. She could almost have laughed - Meg’s eyes had gone swoony again.

Meg sighed and turned to her, with a dreamy smile on her face. “It does a person good to meet a kind and handsome stranger, that it does. Here the man is, busy with his own, and he takes the time to help look for a baby’s doll.”

That only raised more questions, although should it have? Becca bit the inside of her cheek. Meg was right. That had been nice of him. And, honestly, more than most people would have done. Wondering about it, that felt a bit like looking a gift horse in the mouth. She should be grateful, right? She shouldn’t wonder. And yet, first Dean, and then Agent Manzarek, and neither of them had any personal stake in finding this doll.

Why. Just why. Becca shook her head. She really was just going to have unanswered questions for a while, wasn’t she.


	20. The FBI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca overhears another conversation, which only leads to more questions.

A half hour later, the Frankel family had finished packing their luggage and loading themselves up, and the two minivans drove out of the parking lot. Becca watched them go and wondered again what had set them off. They hadn’t complained about their stay. Mr. Frankel had thanked them again, in fact. So why were they checking out now when they still had one more night?

She went back into the lobby, and found Mother sitting at the desk. She was leaned over the keyboard, with her face in her hands. When she heard Becca’s footsteps, Mother straightened up again, and she gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “They’re safely off?” Mother asked.

“Are you okay?” Becca came up to the desk to look at her mother directly, to get what she could from her expression. If she needed help, Becca needed to know.

“I’m fine,” Mother answered automatically. Becca just looked at her. Mother’s forced smile faltered, and she sighed. “I’m fine,” she repeated. “It’s just been… difficult lately.”

“They weren’t supposed to leave until tomorrow morning,” Becca said, biting her lip.

Mother gave her a little shrug. “Maybe difficult isn’t quite a strong enough word.” She looked up at Becca then, and her eyes were suddenly sharp, her gaze pointed. “We’ll need to have a conversation, the two of us, once the guests go to bed. Not now, because---” she cut herself off as Meg came into the lobby.

“Would y’ like me to finish with the rooms, or is it time to start clearing up outside?” Meg let out a little huff of exhaustion. “So much to do, I can hardly believe.”

Mother gave Becca a meaningful glance, and Becca didn’t have to think too hard to interpret it. This is why we can’t talk now – everything is too busy, and people might walk in. “The rooms can wait for a minute,” Mother answered Meg. “We won’t need them for another day, in any case. But yes, please start clearing up outside. Matt and David need to be able to work.”

“I’ll help,” Becca said, and she followed Meg out.

“Please, Becca, y’ needn’t bother,” Meg told her. “Really, why is it y’ never take more than an hour to yourself? It’ll only be a bit to get things cleared up.” Becca reached for one of the empty cake platters, but Meg shooed her away. “This won’t take long,” she insisted. “Really. Go.”

“If you’re sure,” Becca said. She didn’t mind straightening up. This wasn’t just a place of business, after all, this was her home, and she took a measure of pride in maintaining it. But she was, truth be told, feeling a bit odd today. Drained. Maybe it was from overthinking everything. Most likely that was absolutely the case. Now that she stopped moving a second and thought about how she was feeling, she really use a nap before her shift started. Even just a short one would help.

She waved at her mother as she passed through the lobby. Mother was clicking away at the computer - straightening the logbooks Becca thought - but at least she seemed a little happier than she’d been earlier. Like setting up a conversation had removed a load from her mind. Becca didn’t know what they’d talk about. She didn’t even have a short list of possibilities to mull over. But if it made her mother feel better, then whatever it was, it would be worth it.

Becca climbed the stairs and stifled a yawn. She’d thought, that since the last two times she’d slept it had been solid and dreamless, that maybe she would have been a bit more rested than this. She really wasn’t getting good sleep lately, was she. With one thing or another…

She paused as she reached the entrance to the second floor. There was that loud television set again, and this time she knew it was room seventeen. She sighed. She couldn’t play favorites. She couldn’t let him keep the volume up at that level. It wouldn’t be fair to the other guests. She walked up to the door, and raised her hand to knock, but then, there again, beneath the cookware infomercial, she could hear conversation. She shouldn’t have paused, and she knew it was wrong, but she hesitated, and listened.

“---looking for,” Dean was saying, “it wasn’t there.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” said another voice. Becca leaned in closer to the door. Who was that? “It buys us time,” he said. God, his voice was so familiar.

“For what, Sam?” Dean’s voice was very angry, and Becca felt an icy trill fall down her spine. She had the sudden, terrifying thought, what if she should be discovered eavesdropping, right now, with him feeling like this? She knew she should step back, she knew she should walk away, and yet she found herself rooted to the spot. She wanted to hear, she wanted to know. “Time to keep spinning our wheels? Chasing our tails in the dark? Because as far as I know, we still don’t know how to find this thing, let alone stop it.”

“Give Bobby some time. He’s working on it,” the other voice said. “At least now we have some kind of idea of what to look for.”

Becca’s eyes flew open wide as she placed that voice. That was Agent Manzarek. That was an FBI agent, talking alone with Dean Morrison in his room. They were working together on this investigation. What did that mean? Was Dean in the FBI? That couldn’t be right. He’d told her, when she’d asked, that he worked with his father’s business. He hadn’t been lying. Had he? Her head spun. What was this? What did this mean?

“Maybe that’s not enough for me.” From the sound of it, Dean was pacing while he spoke. “We need to get this damn thing now. You know what’s going to happen if we don’t.”

“We don’t---”

“You know what’s going to happen, Sam! The same thing that happened to Thomas Sinclair, Greta Fitzwilliam, George Panacek, Linda Kettrick, Jesus, Sam, you saw that list. If we don’t catch this thing, if we don’t stop it now, another person is going to---”

Then there was a bang, and a thud, and a loud angry string of cursing, and Agent Manzarek said, “Dean!” Becca jumped, startled out of her skin, and bumped her elbow against the door. Quickly she knocked, hoping to cover that up, and oh my god, her heart was beating so fast.

“Shit,” she heard one of them say, but with the sound of her own pulse in her ears, she couldn’t tell which one had said it. There was another thud, and a scrape, and then the door opened.

“Agent,” she said, trying her best to act normal. “I hope I’m not interrupting?” She looked past him into the room, and saw Dean, sitting on the side of the bed, grimacing and leaning over, rubbing his shin. The bedside table was askew, and with those pieces of evidence, Becca quickly came to a conclusion that made sense of what she’d heard. “Are you okay?” She bit the inside of her cheek when she heard the tone of her own voice. She hadn’t meant to sound that concerned.

He looked up at her, and there was a shine in his eyes that she hadn’t seen before. He grinned and sat up straight. “Aw, Becca, I didn’t know you cared.”

Smug son of a bitch. Becca sighed and folded her arms in front of her chest. “I can get the first aid kit if you need a Band-Aid for your booboo.” There. That took the smirk off his face. For half a second she felt good about that, and then immediately felt guilty about it. That had been bitchy. Meaner than it needed to be. He hadn’t deserved that. It had been a kneejerk reaction that overstepped its bounds. She sighed. “Seriously, though, if you cut yourself on the edge of that table you need to put some Neosporin on it.”

“Nah,” he said, getting up on his feet. “Wasn’t looking where I was going, that’s all. Did you need something?”

“I did,” she said. She gestured toward the television set, and the bubbly infomercial host trying to sell their as-seen-on-tv wares. “I wanted to ask if you could please keep it down. I can hear that from the stairwell.”

“Absolutely,” Dean said. He walked over to the television set and switched it off. “Sorry about that. Anything else?”

She looked at him then. His face was blank, completely stone blank from his eyebrows to his chin, but then, the light in his eyes… She sighed again as she stared into those eyes. She really didn’t know why he had that ability to get to her so quickly. She didn’t know why she reacted so strongly to him. She only knew what she felt, and that was just… want. She wanted to be with him, to talk with him, and oh dear god in heaven she wanted to kiss him again.

She barely registered when Agent Manzarek cleared his throat. Dean, though, his eyes darted up to look at the agent, and the edges of his mouth turned down in a subtle frown. “You’re right,” Dean said to him. “There’s no sense in worrying, right? Give other people a chance to do their part.”

“That’s not---” the agent started, but Dean cut him off.

“Thank you, Agent Manzarek. I’ll keep it under advisement.”

The two men stared at each other for a second. There was a mountain of unspoken conversation there, in just that second, and then the agent left the room, shutting the door behind him.

“Now,” Dean said, and he closed that gap between them. “You gonna tell me what you’re really doing here?”


	21. The Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feelings are injured and accusations fly, and the argument ends abruptly when Becca faints.

Becca tried her best not to gasp, really she did, but with him suddenly in such close proximity, looking down at her with those sharp green eyes, she couldn’t help the sharp intake of breath. “I, I told you,” she stammered, “the television---”

“That’s the reason? You’re sure about that? Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like something else.” He lifted one of his hands to brush her hair behind her ear. Oh god, she thought, did he think she’d followed him deliberately? Romantically? Was that what this was? He was wrong, but it was a good excuse. She could work with that. But then, before she could reply, he said something she hadn’t expected. “What were you hoping to hear?”

She took a step back from him then. She looked up at his face, and that symmetrical perfection looking back at her had an edge to it now, immovable, and cold like marble. “What?”

“Don’t give me that,” he said. He turned and paced away from her, and she could see his hands balling in and out of fists at his sides. Then he turned, and oh, oh no, his expression was just the same as it had been on that first day, when he’d thought she was saying he wasn’t good enough. “I’ve heard it before,” he told her, and his voice was so brittle and hard. “I know how people think of me. I’m a big dumb ox. I’m a blunt instrument. I had a guy call me the wrong end of a vacuum once, that was nice. Most poetic insult I ever got. Take all of it together, people constantly saying things like that, it starts to get at you. You start to wonder, maybe they’re right. Maybe the reason all those people keep saying the same thing is because it’s true. And maybe you’re just too stupid to notice. But to hell with that, and to hell with them. I’m not dumb, and the last thing I want is to hear that from you. Not from you.”

“I didn’t say you were!”

“Sure you did,” he said. He gave her a smirk, but his eyes were… Sad. Genuinely, to the bone sad. “You might not think it, but I can hear the difference between a bump and a knock.”

Becca bit her lip. “I don’t---”

“There’s only one reason I would’ve heard that,” he said, as if she hadn’t tried to interrupt at all. “You know it. I know it. So. Let’s have it. What were you hoping to hear, when you were listening in from the hallway just now?”

Without her realizing it, Becca’s hand went up to her mouth. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. “Oh.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Try as she might, Becca couldn’t decipher that look in those eyes. It wasn’t just sadness. Was it regret? Resignation? And then she realized, no. It wasn’t regret, and it wasn’t resignation. It was desperation. It was him reaching for an explanation, any explanation that would make him feel better about what was going on. Suddenly she felt so guilty, so unbelievably incredibly guilty. She had been in the wrong, and she’d known she was when she was doing it. But then---

“For fuck’s sake!” Becca reached up and grabbed a fistful of her hair. “You are the most exhausting, infuriating man I’ve ever met in my entire life.”

“You’re calling me names now? Hold on a minute, you were the one---”

“YOU,” she said, and she pointed at him, “are the one being sneaky. YOU are the one I keep finding in places where I don’t expect him to be, where I shouldn’t expect him to be because he knows full well he doesn’t belong there. YOU are the one having secret conversations with FBI agents and pretending like I’m crazy for thinking that maybe there’s something a little bit concerning about that. There’s a man from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in my Inn. In my HOME, Dean. And you’re talking to him like you’re working with him, like you know more than you’re saying, and I’m the crazy one for picking up on that, for thinking something is wrong with that? You’re going to stand there and turn it around on me, to where it’s only me to blame for everything that’s wrong here, and we forget about what’s going on with you? You keep doing that, and god damn it, Dean, I keep letting you.”

“YOU were the one with her ear shoved against the door,” he said, pointing back at her. “That was you, and that was wrong. You don’t get to pretend you weren’t.”

“You’re right.” Becca felt like throwing her hands into the air in frustration, but managed to keep her posture straight. She wasn’t wrong here, not entirely, and she’d be damned if she’d let him guilt her into backing down again. “Let’s acknowledge that. I was listening at the door. Not for long, but long enough after I told myself I was wrong to do it, and I admit it, yes, okay, I was eavesdropping. What we’re not going to do now is pretend like that’s the only thing going on here.”

“What do you care?” He dragged his right hand down his face and looked away from her.

“Why do you think I wouldn’t?” Becca stepped forward. 

Dean looked over at her again. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You would,” he said, and there was a note of bitterness in his voice that made Becca cringe inwardly. “You would care. You’re not just the desk clerk. You have a personal stake in this place. You’re looking out for your hotel, right? That’s what gives you a valid reason to, what, insert yourself into other people’s conversations?”

“Stop it, Dean. Just stop it.” Becca walked up to him and put her hand on his arm. “You know that’s not what I mean. You’ve been here the same as I have. You’ve been here, every minute, living in the exact same moments I’m living in, and you’re telling me you can’t tell how I feel about you?”

“You don’t feel a goddamn thing about me,” he said, and he tore his arm away from her. He laughed then, once, a dark sardonic chuckle in his throat. “No, you know what, I take that back. It’s not that you don’t feel anything. I’m good old sexy fun, right? I get it. I have fun, you have fun, nobody gets hurt. No shame in that.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Becca said. She put a hand to her forehead. She was so confused, and more than that, she was feeling dizzy.

“It’d be a lot easier on both of us if you would just admit this was a one time thing. Don’t pretend like this is more than it is. It’s insulting.”

“How did we get here?” Her head was spinning. “I don’t…”

“I’m not the type you choose forever. Never have been. I’ve made my peace with that. And you know what? It’s a good life. So I’m not about to let you lead me down the primrose path and get myself sidetracked from what’s important.”

“Sidetracked, I don’t… I don’t understand.”

“I need you to go,” he said. “I need you to go back downstairs. Back to the memorial. Back to your bartender friend. Leave me out of it.”

Becca’s gaze snapped back up to glare at him. “Leave Doug out of it. That’s not what we’re talking about.”

“Yeah, well, maybe we should talk about it,” he said. He lowered himself into the chair by the desk and crossed one leg squarely over the other. “I’m not dumb, and I’m not blind.”

God, her head hurt. It stung just trying to think. “He’s my friend. I’m allowed to have friends.”

“I’d never say you weren’t.”

“Then why are you acting like this?”

“Because he doesn’t want to be friends with you. And from what I saw, you’re okay with that. That’s all right. I get it.”

“What?” Becca stared at him, her mouth agape. She couldn’t solidify her thoughts enough to form a rational question, and she just repeated, “What?”

“I get it, really. It makes sense. He doesn’t want to be friends with you because he’s in love with you. And you love him too. Which is fine. He seems like a good guy. Solid. Dependable. Handsome, too. You really hit the jackpot.”

Becca laughed. It was all she could do. What was he saying? What was happening right now? What the hell was going on? 

Dean’s face darkened even more, and he lowered his foot to the ground. “I’m glad I amuse you,” he said. “That’s two feelings you have for me now. Nice. Real nice, Becca.”

Becca laughed again, and she lowered her face into her hands. Now she couldn’t stop laughing. She really couldn’t. Her breath started coming out in hard, painful gasps, and she was still laughing. Her head was ringing, her lungs were stinging, and she couldn’t focus on anything but the sound of her own hyena laughter. She was trapped in a maelstrom. Something was wrong. Something was so far wrong.

She fell to her knees, gasping for air. Her head felt so strange, heavy and light at the same time, like a brick floating in a pool. Underneath the unending roar of her own hideous laughter, she thought she heard Dean call out her name. The last thing she knew for certain, before she fell into the deep black nothingness of unconsciousness, was the warmth and weight of his hands on her face.


	22. The Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While slowly waking from unconsciousness, Becca overhears another conversation.

For the longest time, there was nothingness. It scared her at first, so terribly, knowing she was so completely alone. This absence of everything, of anything, it was unnatural – but then, beneath it all, wasn’t it sublime! That scared her more, then, realizing the awe she felt toward it, the fearful admiration, the desire to attach herself to it and never let go. It was almost as if this was where she needed to be, floating alone through this black formless void. She needed rest, and she needed comfort, and here in this terrifying place she’d somehow found it.

Tendrils of gossamer light started intruding on that ink black emptiness. Faint, so very faint, and unbelievably thin at first, like a spider’s web in the sunlight. She wanted to touch them, and at the same time she shied away. She knew if they reached her, something would change. She knew she’d be torn away from this moment, and something in her desperately wanted to stay here, in the dark.

One of those strands reached her, brushing against her, then seemed to pop like a bubble, falling away from her in a golden glittery puff. She heard a voice then but couldn’t quite make out what it was saying. Another golden spider string fell across her, and burst into dust, and again, she heard that voice. She felt a pull toward that voice, and she wanted this. But she didn’t want this. She struggled, but there was nothing to struggle against. There was nothing she could do. The wispy tendrils gathered, solidified, brightened. It hurt to watch, but she couldn’t look away. This time, when they touched her, they didn’t dissipate, but stuck to her. As the light gathered, as it coated every inch of her, the sounds of the world grew stronger, more intrusive, and she could finally make out words.

“---in room eight,” a man said. “Just like you thought there would be.”

“Balls,” said another voice.

“What’ve you got for us, Bobby?” That voice, Becca finally recognized. That same golden voice that had called to her in the darkness. Dean. He sounded strained, like he was holding himself together by sheer force of will.

“Not much,” said that other voice. “Bisszikade are pretty rare. I can tell you some of the signs for spotting ‘em, and how they supposedly feed, but other than that…”

“I want to know how to kill the sons a bitches.” Dean was angry again – he did that so often – but there was something beneath the anger, something driving it. “Tell me you’ve got something.”

There was silence then, a dense oppressive silence. 

“You’ve got something, right, Bobby?” Through the fog that permeated her mind, Becca thought she knew that voice. That, now, that sounded like Agent Manzarek again.

“Ah,” the other voice said. He sounded different than the other two, older, and gruffer, and farther away somehow. “You can kill ‘em when they’re still in their eggs. Finding ‘em is the hard part, but killing ‘em, that’s easy enough, you just squish ‘em. But once they’re hatched…”

“It’s not just hatched, god damn it,” Dean said, and it sounded like he kicked the wall. “We gotta do something. We gotta stop this.” He took in a deep, ragged breath, and said, “You know what’ll happen if we don’t.”

“You know what isn’t going to help is getting your panties in a twist,” said that distant voice she didn’t recognize. “I’ll keep looking. Best thing for you boys to do now is keep an eye out for any other weird mood swings. Maybe you’re right, or maybe you’re hearing horses and looking for zebras.”

“We will,” Agent Manzarek said. “Thanks, Bobby. Let us know if you find out anything else.” There was a faint click, and Becca realized what she’d been hearing must have been a phone call, and the odd distance was the result of that third man being on speakerphone.

“I don’t know about you, but I feel a hell of a lot better.” Dean’s voice was just dripping with sarcasm. “This, this is totally normal. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“He’s right, Dean.” She could hear Agent Manzarek’s footsteps as he walked toward her. “Maybe it is just horses.” Dean started to say something, but the agent interrupted. “I know what it looks like. But think about it. Two people sneeze, but one has allergies, and one has a cold.”

“This is a hell of a lot more than a sneeze, Sammy.”

“How long’s it been?”

“An hour. A little bit more.”

Becca felt the ground beneath her shift, and it took her a second to realize that she was on a bed, and one of them had just sat down next to her. She still couldn’t move, and that was a shock when he lifted her eyelid. Her eye stared helplessly upward, and she couldn’t focus on his face. But still, Dean’s features were unmistakable. That was his frown, and those were his eyes. He sighed and pulled away from her, and Becca’s world went back to darkness again.

He stood up again, and left her, and she wanted to follow. She tried so hard to move. Anything. A toe, a finger, even to open her eyes again. But she couldn’t. Why couldn’t she move? What had happened, what were they talking about, what was going on? She felt like she was going insane. Not only that, but listening to them and being unable to act, she was beginning to develop another headache.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Agent Manzarek. “Vanessa Sinclair said it took months. Not days.”

“Yeah, well, Vanessa Sinclair also said she and Tom never really fought until that last month, near the end,” Dean said. “Maybe fighting, I don’t know, maybe it makes it worse.” There was another long pause, and then Dean said, “Stop looking at me like that, Sam. Whatever you’re thinking, this is not that.”

“You’ve been here a day and a half. I know you said we’re not at Poughkeepsie yet, but… maybe you are, Dean.”

“So, what, you just want me to pack up and roll on? Come on, Sammy, you know that’s not me.”

“I know you don’t want to. I know that. But think about this for a minute.”

“God damn it, I’m not giving up.”

“We’re not. I can handle this. I’ll do some research, and we’ll find out how to kill it. But if you can’t…” his voice trailed off.

“Can’t what? No, go on, finish what you were saying. I’m dying to hear it.”

“What do you expect me to say, Dean?”

With every sentence of their argument, Becca’s headache had grown stronger, a pinprick of pain that seemed to emanate from just behind her eyeballs. God, if she could only move, if she could only get their attention and get them to stop talking. Silence. That was what she wanted. Silence would help her.

She felt like she was floating again, somewhere cold and stagnant, like being upside down in a winter lake. Every part of her was numb, except for that one bright spot of pain in her skull. She had to move. She couldn’t accept this. She had to fight it. Somehow, with every ounce of effort she could put out, she fought her eyelids open.

She could see the ceiling. At first, only the colors of it, and the vague shape of the overhead lamp, but she forced herself to focus on that square yellow glass lamp, with its tiny green painted leaves. There it was. She was in her bedroom, she realized. She’d chipped the edge of the light cover once, when she was a child, a silly mistake while playing with a ball in her bed. But there it was, that familiar chip, and seeing that tiny triangle on the square glass lampshade brought everything around it into focus. There now, she could move her eyes at least.

She looked at the two men. Agent Manzarek looked somewhat disheveled - he had taken off his suit jacket and his tie. He was glaring across the room, to where Dean stood, his back to her. She couldn’t be sure exactly, not being able to see Dean’s face, but from the square, stubborn set of his shoulders, she felt it was a pretty safe assumption to think he was glaring back.

“I know what I’m doing,” Dean said.

“Do you? Because honestly I’m not so sure.”

Becca tried then to open her mouth, to call to them. She tried, but the most she could manage was a tight-lipped moan. That was enough. Agent Manzarek looked over at her, startled, and Dean whipped around. Becca saw the look the agent gave Dean when he hurried to her side. There was a layer of exasperation, certainly, but at the heart of it, that whole expression was concern. That was something deep. They weren’t just coworkers, she realized. They couldn’t be. Not with how they’d been talking with each other. Not with their whole dynamic. What was it, she wondered. What was she missing.

“Hey,” Dean said, and she turned her eyes to him again. God, the look he was giving her right now. She lost every other thought in her mind except for her thoughts of him. She hadn’t expected him to be capable of this absolute unvarnished tenderness. She wanted to reach to him, to let him know she was okay, but god damn it all, she could only manage to lift her hand a few inches. That was movement, she told herself. She was coming back to the world. That was something to be grateful for. He sat down on the edge of the bed next to her, and he reached his arm behind her, to support her up into a sitting position. There was warmth again, and Becca sighed. Another thing to be grateful for.

With his arm propping her, she was able to shift herself up to rest her back against her headboard. She tried to speak, she managed to part her lips, but the only sound she could produce was a sad, barely there croak.

“I’ll get you some water,” Agent Manzarek said. He looked one more time at Dean, his lips pressed thinly together, and then he was gone.

“How you feeling?” Dean asked, patting one of her pillows into place behind her. “Good, right? You’re looking good.”

She could hear the false bravado in his voice. It would have made her laugh, if she could have laughed. At the moment, all she could manage was a smile. That was enough for him, though. He saw that, and all the tension flowed out of his shoulders. He lifted his hand and rested his palm against her cheek. She sighed and closed her eyes. There was warmth again. There was light. Why had she ever wanted to stay in that darkness? This. This was what she wanted.


	23. The Realization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca spends some time alone with Dean, but then comes to a crushing realization.

Becca shivered, still feeling the chill from that distant, dark place. Without being asked, Dean reached for the blanket at the bottom of her bed. He pulled it up and wrapped it around her shoulders. “How you feeling?” he asked again.

“Fine,” she said, answering instantly.

The look Dean gave her then. He doubted her. He was concerned for her. She hadn’t been wrong, to think he had feelings for her. This was real, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it. Without strings. Without wanting an apology from him first. She, herself, had been in the wrong, and she felt the need to say it out loud, to hold herself accountable, regardless of whatever other people did.

“Ah, you’re good,” he said, and he gave her a soft smile. “I’m glad you’re back with us.” His expression turned serious. “Has that happened before?”

Becca shook her head. She shivered again, and pulled the blanket closer about her shoulders. She looked at him then, and let out a tiny, amazed laugh. “Come to think of it,” she said, “a lot of things have been happening lately that have never happened before.”

He narrowed his gaze at her. “Like what?”

She sighed at him. He was so focused on what was wrong, he wasn’t noticing what was going right. “Like this.” She raised one of her hands to his cheek. “Like you,” she said.

“You’re something else,” he said. Beneath his bemusement, she could hear another emotion, almost like he was in awe of her. “You realize you were unconscious, right?”

“I know. It’s important. I’m not saying let’s ignore that, because yes, I’m concerned. But it’s not the only important thing.” Becca took in one long shaky breath. “I have something to say, and I need to say it, out loud. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Saying what’s actually on my mind. I didn’t use to. I didn’t have a lot to say. But now, everything is different. Everything is different, and I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence, I don’t know what’s going on, but here’s what I know. What I’m feeling? It’s not just a one time thing. It’s not going to go away just because you check out and leave us. I’m drawn to you, Dean. And yes, a lot of that is… A lot of that is physical. I’m adult enough to admit that. But there’s more to it than that. I want to know who you are. Who are you? Really?”

For a second, they just looked at each other. She could see him thinking, and she could guess the question he was mulling over in his mind. Becca smiled at him, and lifted her other arm to frame his face between her hands. “You’re worth getting to know, Dean.”

He closed those brilliant green eyes, almost like a benediction, as he melted into her hands. “You’re something else,” he repeated. He opened his eyes again, and the sparkle in them made her heart flutter in her ribcage. He lifted his hand to her face, cupping her chin, and he ran his thumb over her lower lip. “Something else,” he said, one final time, and then he leaned down into her. When his lips met hers, she could hardly breathe. Every time they kissed, it felt more real, and this time, oh dear god, this time. She let her hands slide down his neck, down his beautifully firm chest, then wrapped around to press against his back, and she pulled him toward her. The weight of him pressed down on her, and oh how she loved that feeling.

Then his hands were on her body, and she loved that even more. The blanket fell down to either side of her, any need for its extra warmth forgotten. His hand found her breast, and he ran his thumb over her dress, teasing her nipple. She moaned, and her fingers flexed against his back. Too much fabric, there was just too much between them. Why did he have to be wearing so many layers?

Dean was evidently thinking the same thing, because he shrugged himself out of his top shirt and then tossed it to the floor. There, now, the short-sleeved tee stopped near the shoulder, and she could see his bare arms. They had light freckles too, just like the ones on his beautiful face, and oh, how toned his muscles were. She ran her fingers down his arms, tracing him, appreciating him. She could hear his breathing shift, catching in his throat and turning ragged.

He caught one of her hands in his, and brought it up to his mouth. He kissed her palm, slowly, deeply. She gasped as he let her arm fall in his grip, and his hand slid along her arm back down to her neck. Every move he made, it was absolutely painstakingly deliberate. He was so gentle, so methodical, and every second that passed while he worshipped her skin made her ache.

She reached for the hem of his shirt, and she slid her hands underneath the cotton. There was the warmth she wanted, there in the smooth firmness of his torso. She ran her hands up that wall of muscle, and losing his touch from her skin was worth it when he reached up and pulled his shirt off over his head. She had a split second to register that he had a tattoo, an intricate black shape that stood out against his tan, but she couldn’t tell what it was before he was kissing her again.

His tongue dipped into her mouth and she lost all sense of herself. There was only now, this moment, the heat of his breath and the warmth of his body. She sighed and wrapped her arms around his neck, lacing her fingers into his hair and pulling him closer to her. She couldn’t get him close enough. She wanted more, so much more.

He shifted again, lifting himself up, and he was fully on the bed now. His legs went between hers, and she lifted her knees to capture him at his hips. He moaned into her mouth and rocked, ever so slightly. Every nerve in her body was awake, alive, and she could feel everything. Her fingers tightened in his hair, and she gasped.

He pulled back and met her eyes. He didn’t say anything. He just looked, and in that look, there were universes. She reached up, and put her hand on his cheek, and once again, he turned his head into the caress. How could a man this beautiful be so touch-starved. Becca’s heart fluttered, and she sighed. In that instant she realized she loved how human he was. She loved how vulnerable he was, beneath the bluster. She loved him. “Dean---”

Her bedroom door opened, and Dean flipped over her, to lay alongside her in the bed. Becca’s eyes darted guiltily up, and there was Agent Manzarek, a glass of water in his hand. When he saw them, his lips went thin.

“Heya, Sammy,” Dean said. He sounded as guilty as Becca felt.

Wordlessly, the agent – whose first name was Sam, Becca finally recognized – handed her the glass of water. He reached down, to the floor, where Dean had discarded his shirts. “You dropped these,” he said, and he tossed them on the bed.

“Thank you,” Dean said, so sarcastically, so frustrated, and he reached forward to take up his shirts. “Don’t know what I’d do without you, buddy.”

“I doubt that,” said the agent. “Damn it, Dean. What do you think you’re doing?”

“Ah, put a cork in it, Sam.” Dean yanked his cotton tee back over his head. “A man’s entitled to be shirtless every now and then without getting the third degree.”

“Now? Really? What the hell?”

They were talking about her, but not to her. It was insulting. Becca stood up, barely registering the half full glass of water in her hand. “Look,” she said, and she walked over to Agent Manzarek. “I’m the one who should be getting answers here. All day long, I’ve been sidestepped, I’ve been distracted, and I haven’t gotten word one out of either of you. If you’re going to talk about me, you might as well answer some of those questions you’ve been avoiding while you’re at it.”

The agent looked at her, and he seemed genuinely surprised. “You have more questions?” He looked back at Dean, who was pulling on his top shirt again. “She’s been asking questions? What the hell, Dean?”

“I’ve got it handled, Sam,” Dean said through gritted teeth.

Becca spun around to face him. “You’ve got me handled?” Her eyes flew wide in realization. “Is that what this was?”

Dean grimaced. “That’s not---”

“Oh no,” Becca said, walking back over to him. “I get it. Get her hot and bothered, she won’t notice anything. She won’t remember she had questions. That’s what this was. That’s what this was from the start, wasn’t it.”

“No!” Dean flipped up and off the bed, in one liquid move. My god, he was agile. Becca’s eyebrows rose, and she had to fight to get control of her expression. She absolutely could not let herself get distracted, not now. He took a step forward and reached out one hand toward her. “That’s not what this is.”

“What is it, then?” Becca’s voice cracked and she took a step backward. She didn’t want to believe it, not with how he’d just been. Not with what she’d just felt. But it was the only thing that made sense. The way he’d kissed her when she’d started asking questions. The way she’d fallen off track so easily. And the way he was clearly working with Agent Manzarek. It wasn’t a coincidence he was here in the first place. It couldn’t be. He’d lied to her that very first day, and she’d known it. She’d seen it in him. She hated herself then, so much, for having let that go. She looked back up at Dean through tear-filled eyes and said, “You’ve been lying to me this whole time. You…” Without thinking, she flung the water in her half-full glass in his face. The look of surprise in his beautiful eyes almost made it worth it. Almost. “God damn it,” she whispered.

She turned and pushed past Agent Manzarek to run into the hall. She’d be damned if she’d let him see her cry now. And she was, despite her best efforts. The tears ran down her face faster than she could wipe them away. Everything was garbage. She was breaking inwardly, and she cursed herself for it. She’d told herself not to let it get this far. God damn it all, she’d known. And she’d let it happen anyway.


	24. The Car

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean convinces Becca to drive away with him, with the promise of honest answers.

Becca was almost to the stairwell when he caught up to her again. “Wait,” he said. “God damn it, Becca, stop.” 

She did stop then. She told herself it was because she could fall down the stairs if she tried running down them in this state, and she told herself it was because she wanted to confront him. She told herself it had nothing to do with that vague nagging hope that maybe she was wrong, that maybe the evidence was purely circumstantial. Then she told herself to stop making excuses. She knew that wasn’t true. She knew it. She turned to him, and when she tried to speak, her voice broke. She held up one hand. Just wait a second, give me a second. She took in a long, shaky breath, and used every ounce of her will to pull herself together enough. “I’ve never lied to you,” she said, and somehow she managed to keep her voice steady.

He grimaced and looked away. There, now, the guilt was honest, at least. At least he knew he’d wronged her. “Look, Becca---”

“I don’t want excuses,” she said. “I either want answers, or I want you to let me go. It’s one or the other.”

He looked back at her then, pulling at her heart with those piercing green eyes. “I can’t let you go.”

“It’s answers, then,” Becca said. “I don’t know who you really are, and I don’t know what you really want. And I don’t have to accept that. It’s answers or that’s it, we’re done here. You can’t keep pretending I’m not here. I am here, Dean. I see you, and I see you with him, and I’ve heard a lot of things that don’t make any sense at all.”

His eyes narrowed at her. “What have you heard?”

“That,” she said, “was not the right response.”

She turned and started walking down the stairs. She was careful, steady on her feet, feeling stubborn and determined. This whole thing was ridiculous. She was ridiculous. Why was she worried about him? Why was she spending all of her energy trying to pull blood from a turnip? She had other things she should rightly have been concerned with.

Like why the hell had she passed out? She’d never passed out before, not once in her life. Granted, she’d also never had a conversation like that in her life. Maybe, emotionally, she hadn’t been able to handle it. People did faint, sometimes. It did happen. But then again, it wasn’t supposed to happen, especially when she wasn’t in the habit of it.

Then, again, he caught up to her, just as she reached the junction to the second floor. “Damn it, Becca. Wait.” He got around in front of her, blocking the way, and held his arms out wide. My god, what a wingspan. Becca bit her lip – it hurt, and she tasted blood. 

“For fuck’s sake,” she said, angry at him and angry at herself. “Just let me go.”

“I told you before, I can’t do that.” He reached out for her and laid his hand gently on her arm. Her first impulse was to pull away, but then, she didn’t. Had she chosen to do that? She was starting to grow dizzy again. 

“I need to go,” she said as she put a hand to her forehead. She needed a doctor. That was it. She needed to go downstairs, she needed to let her mother know she needed to call Doctor Kohli. He would know if there was something wrong with her. “Would you please move?”

“Not until you listen to me,” he said.

She snapped her chin up and glared at him. “Are you talking now? Or is this more distraction? Because I’m not having it, Dean.”

He sighed, and he leaned in toward her. “I need you to trust me. If you go running off now, I won’t be able to fix this. I can’t live with that, Becca.” He took her hand in his and brought it to his lips. “Please,” he said, and he laid a light kiss on her knuckles. “You gotta trust me.”

Becca let out a soft scoff. She wanted to trust him. She wanted, so badly, to fall into his arms and finish what they’d started upstairs. But he still hadn’t told her one god damn thing. “I don’t even know who you are,” she said. “How am I supposed to trust you?”

He looked into her eyes then, and she couldn’t quite tell what he was feeling. It was odd, a kind of sad hope. “Sam’s gonna kill me,” he whispered. He turned, and gently pulled her behind him. “Come on.”

She followed him, and she could admit, that was absolutely because she wanted to. She couldn’t be sure, and she knew she couldn’t, but it seemed like finally he’d made the decision to answer some of the questions that had been worrying her mind. It seemed like finally she might actually get some real responses, something to make sense of the confusion around her. She didn’t want to pass that up, not by a long shot. “Where?”

“You want to talk,” he said as they descended the stairs. “We’re going somewhere we can talk.” 

They reached the ground floor and he led her out toward the lobby. As they passed room five, she heard Meg call out to her. Becca turned, and saw Meg leaning out into the hallway, holding a bundle of bedsheets. “Are y’ off somewhere?”

“I’ll be back,” Becca promised. She saw Meg’s eyes dart down to where Dean was holding her hand. Immediately, Becca said, “It’s not what you think!” For fuck’s sake. Yes, that was a lie, but did it have to sound so much like one? Before Meg could say anything else, Dean had already led Becca into the lobby.

Mother was at the desk, talking with the Latterly sisters and the woman staying in room nine. Becca couldn’t focus hard enough to remember what that woman’s name was. Mother looked up, met Becca’s eyes, and the smile fell from her face. “Becca?” She glanced at Dean. “Where are you going?”

Becca couldn’t bring herself to lie again, not to Mother. But she definitely couldn’t bring herself to tell the absolute truth either. “I have a headache,” she said as she quickly followed Dean out the door. “I’ll be back.”

“Young lady,” she heard Mother say, and oh lord, didn’t that tone mean business. Becca pretended she hadn’t heard, even as the crunching of the gravel beneath her feet matched the guilty quake of her heart. Dean led her to his car, and only let her hand go when he’d opened the passenger door for her. Becca fell into her seat, and just as she shut the door behind her, she heard Mother call out her name again. Oh LORD, she’d followed her outside.

Dean slid into his seat and had the ignition turned before he’d shut his door. He pressed the gas, and the car peeled out of his parking space. He maneuvered the car through the parking lot like a champion, cleanly and smoothly, and Becca couldn’t deny the thrill she felt. In the rearview mirror, she could see Mother staring after them, her hands on her hips. Becca bit the inside of her cheek. That was going to be a problem.

“Looks like we’re both making dumb decisions today,” Dean said, and when she looked at him, he was smirking at the road ahead. 

Becca felt a chill run up her spine. “Is it worth it?”

He turned his head, and met her eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re worth it.”

That wasn’t what she had asked, but there was something in the way he said it that gave her pause. “How can you do that?”

“Ah, nothing to it. I’ve been driving since I was eight.”

“No, I--- Eight?” That had taken her by surprise, but she shook her head and she said, “No. I mean I don’t understand you.”

“That’s what we’re here for, right?”

She sighed and settled against the seat to study him. His hands were firm on the steering wheel, but not aggressively so. His posture was more relaxed than she’d seen from him for a while now. That said something, too. 

“If it makes you feel better,” he said, and he paused. His jaw worked as he gathered the rest of that thought. “There are things about this… about this,” he said, waving a hand from her to him, “that I don’t get either. I live my life the way I live it. Things get complicated, all the goddamn time. But not like this.”

Becca absorbed that as the silence settled in between them again. She wanted to believe that. And as she thought about it, she thought she could. She’d seen it, hadn’t she? She’d seen how he reacted to gentleness. There were times he’d been so real. But then, the other times… 

Without thinking about it, she lifted her hand to her mouth and bit her thumbnail. What was she here for, if not to give him a chance? What was she here for, if not to ask questions and receive answers? What was she here for, if not to believe the answers she got? It was ridiculous to dwell.

He pulled onto a side road, and the trees closed in around them. The road here was only gravel, and covered with a thin layer of fallen leaves. Another month, and these trees would all be bare, but right now, they were still full of red and orange. When he had driven a fair distance from the main road, Dean slowed the car to a stop and killed the engine. “Okay,” he said, and he turned to her. “Let’s talk.”


	25. The Bisszikade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca finally gets answers, and it's beyond anything she ever could have expected.

Becca turned sideways in her seat and rested her back against the inside of the passenger door of Dean’s car. If she was going to get answers, she was going to start from the very beginning, and she was going to make him look her in the eyes to do it. She waited until he’d turned to face her, and then she said, “Let’s start with who you are. What’s your name? Is it really James Dean Morrison, or was that a lie?”

The edge of his mouth turned up in a quiet sideways grin. “Six of one, half dozen of the other.” He laughed a little under his breath, and it seemed like he was laughing at himself. “Shit, Becca. You were never supposed to know about Dean. I never meant to tell you that much. Sam gave me hell for it when he found out.” He rested his right arm on the seat back behind him and shifted his body, so that he was facing her more directly. “My name is Dean. My real name. James Morrison is the fake.”

“Why?” Becca bit the inside of her cheek. “Why a fake name, I mean. Are you undercover? With the FBI?” That would explain it, she thought. But when she saw his jaw clench, she knew it couldn’t be that simple.

“My, ah…” Dean paused. His lips moved, a few false starts as he almost spoke, but decided better of it. “Okay,” he finally said with a sigh. “What you need to understand about that is, I do work undercover. It’s easier to get what we need that way. But I’m not with the FBI. Never have been.”

“But then… but then what about Agent Manzarek?”

Dean turned his head a little to the side, and lifted one hand, palm upward.

Becca blinked at him, and her eyes went wide as she registered what that gesture meant. “Oh my god. Is he not…”

“He is not,” Dean said.

“So the badge, the name, everything is a cover? Why would… who ARE you?”

Dean sighed. “That’s a tough one to answer,” he said. “The truth, and I’m telling you this right now, the truth is going to sound crazy. Me and Sam, we’re gonna sound like crazy people. But I promise, this is the truth, and when you think about it, it’s gonna make sense of everything else.” He took in a deep, steadying breath. “We… hunt monsters.”

“Excuse me?” She hadn’t heard him right. Surely.

“Yeah,” Dean said, his voice trailing off into a stifled groan. “I know. It sounds like crazy talk. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, all that’s supposed to be made up, scary story bullshit. Fairy tales. But guess what, this is fun, fairies are real too. It’s all real. All of it. And I hunt them. Me and Sam, that’s what we are. Hunters.”

Becca’s head was spinning. He was right. This was crazy talk. Absolutely batshit crazy talk. “You told me you worked with your father?”

His gaze seemed to deepen, growing sad with reminiscence. “Yeah,” he said. “We did. Me and Sam, we were… brought up in the business, I guess you’d say. Sam was raised in it, his whole life. Sometimes I wish I was too. Sometimes…” He turned his head and looked out through the windshield. “Sometimes I remember what it was like before. Back when it was only my imagination that put anything under the bed. I remember when I was four, maybe five, I had this nightlight in my room. Crappy little plastic thing, a blue crescent moon kind of deal, probably cost two bucks at the dollar store. But my mom would plug that dollar store nightlight in for me every night, and then it didn’t matter where the shadows were, because that light was enough to chase them away. It felt good, having that. It felt good.” He sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “But those things, those things that weren’t supposed to be real… They, ah.” He cleared his throat. “One of them got my mom. Burned down our house. Melted that nightlight. And then there was nothing but shadows. Dad taught me and Sammy how to spot the things hiding in the dark. He taught us how to fight them. That’s what we do. That’s what I’m going to do here too. You can count on that.”

In the silence that followed, Becca didn’t know what to say to that. What could she say? None of it seemed possible. He’d been right when he said she’d think it was crazy talk. It WAS crazy. Vampires? Fairies? That was folklore, mythology, that wasn’t real. But the way he talked about it, so cleanly, so surely. “So,” she said slowly. “You hunt… monsters. And your father hunted monsters. And… Sam? He’s your…?”

“Brother,” Dean said. “Sam’s my little brother.”

Becca fell silent and chewed on that for a second. Brothers. That did explain the dynamic between them. That bickering familiarity. She and Charlie had been like that sometimes, before he’d gone out on tour. She was willing to believe that could be the truth. If that was the truth, then… the monster thing… But it just didn’t make any sense.

“We don’t have any,” she said offhandedly.

“Say again?”

Becca turned to him, her eyebrows knit. “What?”

“You said something just then. You don’t have any?”

“Oh,” Becca said. “I just… I’ve lived here my whole life. I would’ve noticed if there was anything going bump in the night. We don’t even have any good ghost stories. We’re just… an Inn.” Dean exhaled through his nose, and Becca did not appreciate that expression on his face. It was like he needed to tell her something, but he was holding back. “What? What is that?”

“The Inn’s not haunted,” he said. “It’s infested.”

“What?!”

“It’s gonna be okay,” Dean said. “I swear to you, Becca, we’re on it.”

“No, Dean.” Becca scooted forward on the seat, closer to him, and looked him squarely in the eyes. “Tell me right now exactly what you mean by infested.”

Dean grimaced. “This thing we’re hunting,” he said. “It’s called a Bisszikade. We weren’t sure at first, but with everything that’s happened, it’s looking pretty solid that’s what you’ve got.”

“What is that?” She didn’t trust herself to try the pronunciation.

“The Bisszikade is a kind of bug monster from Europe,” Dean answered. “We’ve found some French lore about them too, but the stories come mostly from the Black Forest area in Germany. They’re blood drinkers, like leeches, but they only ever drink from humans.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Wouldn’t we notice if we had bugs eating people?” Becca shook her head. “We’ve never had any kind of bug problem, let alone mutant bugs.”

Dean stared at her for a second, studying her. Then he leaned forward, and he rested his hand on her wrist. “I’m gonna tell you something, Becca,” he said. “It’s rough. It’s real rough. But I’m trusting you to be able to handle this.”

Becca’s breath caught in her chest, and she felt a chill run all the way through her. “I’m ready,” she said. “What is it?”

Dean’s jaw worked for a moment, and then, slowly, he said, “The Bisszikade… they don’t eat the whole person. They never do. Their bite has a venom in it that they can use as a sedative, to keep their victim complacent, but it’s also a real fast-acting poison. People that get bit, if they also get injected, don’t live for long after. When they hatch, they’re small, not much bigger than a housefly. And they hatch hungry, but they’re slow, and they’re weak. They need a meal, right away, but there’s two requirements for it. One, they only drink fresh human blood. Two…” He paused. “That blood needs to be pumping slowly enough for them to feed easily.”

“What… what does that mean?”

“They only go for people who are asleep, after they hatch.”

Becca’s mouth dropped open. “Are you… are you saying…?”

“I’m saying,” Dean said, “that the reason we know it’s a Bisszikade in your Inn, is because it’s hatched, and it’s fed.”

Becca lifted her hand to her mouth. She swallowed, a few times, before she could respond again. “You think it ate Mrs. Kettleman.”

“It gets worse.” Dean took up her hand. “I need you to stay with me, Becca.”

“I’m here,” Becca said. She didn’t feel like it. Her mind felt millions of miles away. She wasn’t here. This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t making any sense. Mrs. K had died in her sleep. She hadn’t gotten murdered by some mutant bug. This was impossible.

“The Bisszikade don’t like dead blood. They stop feeding when the person is dead. But they’re still hungry, because they were slow, and they were weak, and they didn’t get as much as they wanted. So they find another person. And this time, because they’re stronger, because they can, they make a nest inside the person. They don't bother with the poison, because this time they need a steady supply. They latch on, and they feed from the inside. And they grow. They feed, and they grow, and then…” Dean’s voice dropped off as his breath hitched in his throat. He couldn’t bring himself to say it, whatever it was. “Sam’s been doing research,” Dean said, forcing himself through. “He’s looked into the county records, and your records, and he’s found out something you are not going to like. Are you with me? Stay with me, Becca.”

“I’m here,” Becca repeated, feeling completely untethered from the earth.

“These things, they don’t like to migrate. They have a home base, and they operate out of that. It’s easier to spot them when all their victims are in one place. Somebody dies in their sleep, and then three months later, somebody in the same house… ends like that. You can find their egg then – they grow in the egg for a long, long time, we’re talking twelve, thirteen years, so you’ve got time to find and kill them before the next one hatches. But you, see, you work in an Inn. People come in, people go out. It’s a lot harder to connect a guy in Arizona with a lady in Palm Springs. But Sam, he’s good, Becca. He’s real good when it comes to research. He found that connection. He figured it out, and I came here to try and stop it. You’ve got Bisszikade using Summerview as a home base. Not just one, Becca. Generations. This has happened dozens of times.” He paused again, and he squeezed her hand. “Your father was one of the victims.”


	26. The Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean tells Becca exactly what kind of creature they're hunting.

Becca pulled away from Dean. She leaned against that passenger door again, and for the longest time, she couldn’t think. None of this was real. It couldn’t be. But he was so sure about it, so completely in control of his voice and his features. Everything in her wanted to believe him, even though everything in her didn’t want to accept it.

“I know what you’re thinking. I told you, it sounds crazy. But I’m not lying to you, Becca,” Dean said softly. He reached forward again, and took her hand in his, and this time, she didn’t pull away. “Not now, and not ever again.” His voice was so warm. It wrapped around her like a blanket, and despite herself, she felt soothed. 

“You’re saying,” she said slowly, and her voice trailed off. She couldn’t even put it into words, at first, what he was saying. “My father died because he was poisoned?”

“I know it’s not easy to hear,” Dean said. He lowered his eyes, and his smile was so sad then. “Remember the last time we were here? Remember what you said, about us having ways we were the same?”

“I do,” Becca said. She remembered every second of every minute they were together. She was sure of it, the way this man had imprinted himself on her mind.

“When I told you about my dad...” Dean looked back up at her, and his eyes, oh no, they were wide and deep and beautiful, filled with unshed tears. Becca felt another rush of emotion toward him, that same rush she’d felt in her bedroom upstairs, and she knew then that she’d believe him, no matter what he said. She’d trust him, beyond everything. She’d love him, and it would be forever.

“Did he…” Becca scooted herself forward on the seat again, close enough that their knees touched. “Your dad…”

“That part about the heart attack.” Dean’s words had a tremble to them, like he was just barely holding himself together. “He didn’t… it wasn’t…”

Becca took in a little gasp, and her hand went unconsciously to her mouth. “Did… did he…”

“Same as my mom,” Dean said, and the sound of his voice was the most fascinating combination of anger and grief. “We got it, though. Sammy and me.” Dean’s eyes shone then, with such a beautiful mix of sadness and pride, Becca could hardly breathe. “We got the son of a bitch. Just not before it took my dad.” Dean cleared his throat. “But hey. It happens. I’m not special.” 

Dean was trying to shrug it off. Damn him and that false bravado. Becca put her hand on his arm, and he looked up at her. How could he not think he was special? He was. Dean was unlike any person she’d met in the whole of her life. I love you, she thought. I love you so goddamn much. You are strong, and you are beautiful, and you are deeper than you realize. I love every infuriating thing about you. But aloud, she said, “I’m so sorry, Dean.”

“He was a bastard,” Dean said, laughing a little now, blinking away the tears. “But yeah. I’m sorry too.”

“Dean,” Becca said. She reached up and laid her hand on his cheek, turning his face toward her. “Dean,” she repeated, and then she lifted her mouth to his. She could feel his chest rise as he took in a deep breath, in surprise or in pleasure, she couldn’t tell, but then his arms were around her, and he was kissing her in return. They shifted, both of them in perfect sync, and then she was lying on top of him. She pulled back, and looked down at him, and oh dear god, the way he was looking back. “God,” she whispered, not realizing she’d said it. She traced his jaw with the back of her fingers, and as his eyes fluttered closed, as she watched him melt into the caress, she knew for an absolute certainty that this was one of the reasons she felt the way she did about him. He needed to be loved, actually loved, for everything he was. He deserved it, for everything he was. She lowered herself again, holding her hand to the side of his face as she kissed him. This was exactly where she wanted to be. Fuck her responsibilities, fuck the world, fuck everything else, this was the only thing that mattered. Her, and him, and the way he felt beneath her, and the sensation of his hands cupping the small of her back.

Then he lowered those hands, and he lifted the fabric of her pretty plum dress. He slid his palms, rough and callused and so very warm, up the length of her legs, following the curve of her thighs. She made a sound, then, a quiet little cry, as his fingers found the bottom edges of her underwear and slipped beneath the cotton fabric. He cupped her with both hands, and pulled her closer to him, breathing out a sigh that was her name.

She lowered her mouth to his neck, and kissed him again, right there at the swell of his shoulder. She breathed in the scent of him, warm and spicy and devastating. He moaned, deep in his throat, as she nipped at his skin with her teeth. “You’re gonna kill me,” he whispered. But then, his eyes opened again, and he looked at her with a brutal, sudden clarity, and he brought his hands up to gently push her away.

She felt then like she was crashing back to earth. “What,” she breathed. “What did I do.”

“It’s not you,” he said. She pulled back, and he shifted back and lifted himself up, and then they were sitting upright facing each other again. He gave her a smile, low and slow. “There’s not a damn thing wrong with what you were doing. God knows I want this. I want you.”

“Then why?” She bit the inside of her cheek. She wasn’t sure she actually wanted the answer to that.

He took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “There’s…” He paused and turned in his seat toward the front again. He put his hands on either side of the steering wheel, and bowed his head, his eyes closed. “There’s a chance I’m wrong. God damn it, I hope I’m wrong, Becca. But if I’m right, then we can’t do this. Not now.”

“Right about what?” Becca folded her arms across her chest. She felt cold now, and maybe it was just the absence of his body heat, and maybe it was just the autumn chill sneaking into the still car, but then again, maybe it was fear. He was scaring her, well and truly scaring her now.

“There’s four stages in the Bisszikade life cycle,” he said. For some reason, he was keeping his eyes closed, keeping his face turned away from her. Becca wished, so fervently, that he would just look up at her, that he would be here with her again, instead of trying to distance himself from this. From her. “First stage, they hatch. Second stage, they nest, and they mature. But then the third stage… It’s ugly. It’s real ugly, Becca. It’s the reason me and Sam got involved in the first place. People dying in their sleep, that doesn’t set off too many alarm bells. Especially when it’s so few and far between. But that third stage…”

“Just tell me. Please,” she told him. Yes, she was terrified of what he was going to say, and she wished she wasn’t going to hear it. But dragging it out was only making it worse.

He sighed, so heavily that his shoulders physically drooped from the exhalation. He turned his face toward her and met her eyes. “Bisszikade have a few places they tend to nest. Intestines, brain, heart, or near the lungs. Usually the lungs. They can get the freshest, most oxygenated blood there. And they grow. Not just grow. They expand. These things, they start out tiny, and by the time they’re done…” He gestured with his hands, and Becca’s eyes flew wide at how far apart his hands were.

“But they’re still inside people.”

“Yeah. For a while.”

“And then…” Becca’s throat grew tight. “What happens?” She knew, she already knew what he was going to say, but she asked it anyway. She had to hear it, directly from him.

“They hatch again, fully grown,” Dean said grimly. “Only this time there’s a hell of a lot more blood, and a hell of a lot more pain.”

“Oh my god,” Becca said. She put both her hands up to her mouth and stared out the window, unblinking. She thanked god, then, thanked whatever innate sense of goodness in the universe that had seen to it Mrs. Kettleman hadn’t been who it had chosen for the third stage. She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like for Meg, to find Mrs. K in room eight, viscera everywhere and a hole in her chest the size of a grapefruit.

“That’s why,” Dean said, gripping the steering wheel with his fingers until his knuckles were white. “That’s the only reason why we’re not in that backseat right now. God, Becca.” He looked at her, with those intense green eyes, and her heart gave a little shudder inside her. “You really are something else. I look at your face, and all I want to do is kiss you. I hear your voice, and all I want to do is be with you. I don’t know when it happened, I don’t know when this became more about you and less about the hunt, but god damn it, this is something I can’t ignore. I can’t push it aside. I can’t pretend I’m not feeling it. And that’s why we need to go back. We need to talk to Sam, to talk to Bobby. We need to make sure we’ve found it for sure and figure out how get rid of it. Before it’s too late.”

Becca was so mesmerized by the first part of what he was saying, she almost didn’t notice the second. “Wait,” she said, bringing herself back. “Do you think you know where it is?”

The way he looked at her then, his eyes sharp and desperate, sent a chill down her spine. “Yeah,” he said. “We have a theory.”


	27. The Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunters find answers to what they were looking for, and Becca finds something too.

Becca stared at him. She couldn’t process this. She didn’t want to process this. “No,” she said. She shook her head and repeated, “No. No. Absolutely not.”

“Don’t panic, Becca, stay with me.” 

“What the fuck are you talking about,” Becca said. She collapsed against the passenger door, shoving herself as far away from Dean as possible.

“God damn it, Becca, stay with me.”

“And what? What am I supposed to say? How am I supposed to react?” Becca put a hand up to her head, covering her eyes. She was feeling dizzy again. She was feeling overwhelmed. She was feeling---

The seat shift as he moved toward her.

Becca lowered her hand and looked up. There he was again, inches away, pouring concern into her with his brilliant green eyes, beautiful and perfect and intense. He reached out to her and took her hand in his. He turned her palm toward him, and brought it to his own chest, holding it there just above his heart. She could feel his steady pulse as his heart beat beneath his cotton tee, she could feel his chest move as he breathed in and out. “Stay with me,” he said again, his voice so gentle and low it was almost a whisper. “Breathe with me.”

Becca let her breath escape in one long whoosh, and she forced her breathing to match his own. They sat there together, silent, existing in sync. He was gravity, pulling her back to earth. He was reality, keeping her tethered. He was security, keeping her safe. She believed in him. She trusted him completely. He knew what he was doing, and he would know what to do.

“But wait, I don’t understand,” she said, when she’d gathered herself enough to speak again. “Wouldn’t I… wouldn’t I know? Wouldn’t I be able to… to feel it?”

Dean slowly shook his head. “It’s not that simple. These things are sneaky little bastards. Every case we’ve found so far, the earliest people noticed anything was wrong was nine weeks after getting picked for the buffet. With you…” He paused, and his mouth quirked up into a sad smile. “I guess it’s a good thing I piss you off so much.”

She thought back on it. She had felt weird lately. Not like herself. She’d attributed that to him, and how off balance he sent her. Maybe that had been unfair. Maybe her fluctuating emotions, maybe that panic attack she’d had… She didn’t want to accept it, but despite what she wanted, she had to admit it made sense. “So,” she said. “What do we do?”

Dean’s jaw clenched, and his brow furrowed. “Step one, I gotta check back in with Sam. If I know my brother, he’s turned your room inside out by now.”

“Inside out? Why?”

“You, ah…” Dean gave her another quiet little smirk, and damn him, how was he so goddamn cute. “You remember when I found that doll for that kid?”

“In room five,” Becca answered. Of course she remembered. She could still remember the exact expression on his face when she’d caught him down behind the bed. “I KNEW you were up to something.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I was looking for the doll,” Dean said. “But that was, I dunno, more like a side quest. What we were really doing, me and Sam, was checking those rooms and making sure that thing hadn’t hitched a ride with that family.”

“What were you looking for?”

“These things leave a kind of a trail behind them,” Dean explained. “After they jump ship that first time. It’s real hard to spot, practically microscopic, but you can find it if you know how to look for it. And they leave a track all the way from the first person to the next. Sam found the front end of it when he checked out eight. There’s a chance we won’t find the other end in your room. There’s always a chance we’re wrong about this. So then all we gotta do is find out where that trail does lead.”

Becca sat silently, pondering over everything. None of this made sense, and yet here she was accepting it. She watched as Dean pulled out his cellphone. He frowned at it for a second, and when she glanced down curiously to see why, she saw he’d gotten several texts that he had heretofore ignored. He shifted back in his seat and made the call. 

“Heya, Sammy,” he said. Becca could just barely hear the other man’s voice on the other end of the line. He did not sound happy, not in the least, and from the way Dean’s jaw was working, he was really getting chewed out. “Yeah, well,” Dean spat angrily, “what do you know about it.” From the way Dean grimaced then, Becca could tell he regretted saying that. Dean sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Damn it, Sam. Hold your horses, would you? I didn’t do it for no good goddamn reason. I need you to trust me on this one.” Then Sam responded, too far away for Becca to hear what he’d said, but Dean’s expression hardened as his eyebrows lowered and his jaw clenched. “Boy, do I hate being right all the time.” He sighed and ran his hand down over his face. “Okay. All right. We’re coming back. Call Bobby and let him know.” Dean ended the call and slid his phone back into his pocket.

For a moment, he didn’t say anything. His fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and released, and tightened again. His breath was shaky, as if he was having to force his lungs to do their jobs. Becca didn’t want to ask. She didn’t want to know. Finding out for certain, having one finite solid answer, would destroy all possibilities for other endings. But she couldn’t let things sit like this. Not like this. She bit her lip. “Dean?”

He turned to her then, and looked at her with overwhelming grief in his eyes. A single tear escaped his hold to trail down his left cheek, and he gave her a sad smile. “Becca.”

“That’s it, then,” she said. She fell back into her seat, feeling like every atom in her body weighed a hundred pounds. “He found it.”

“Yeah,” Dean said. His voice had an edge to it, full of vibrant anger. “Came up through the vent.” He slammed his fist against the rim of the steering wheel. “God damn it.”

“Maybe it’s better I know now,” Becca said, her voice breaking. “Maybe it’s better to know for sure, so I can live the next few months and really… really appreciate the time I’ve got.”

“Stop it,” he said, and he took her by her shoulders, gently, firmly. “Don’t you do that. Don’t give up. I’m sure as hell not going to.”

She looked at him then, really looked, and saw nothing but determination. He had such a power to him. He was alive, alight with the kind of inner fire that myths were made of. She felt a swell of admiration, of awe, of love. “For fuck’s sake,” she breathed, and then she kissed him again.

He returned the kiss with a sigh, and whispered into her mouth, “We don’t have time for this, Becca.”

“There’s never time,” she said as she threw her arms around his neck. She kissed him again, breathing in the taste of him, sweet and spicy and absolutely devourable.

He rested his hands on either side of her waist. “Never,” he agreed, quiet, breathless, and he pulled her to him. She swung herself over him and turned, so that she was sitting in his lap, her legs on either side of his. She reached up to wrap her fingers in his hair and pulled downward, smoothly, firmly. His eyes opened in surprise, looking up at her with his head tilted back. “Can I help you?” he asked, and oh my god, the smirky sarcasm in his tone made her toes clench in her shoes again.

She lifted her other hand and trailed her index finger along his cheek. “I think you know exactly how you can help me,” she said, and she grinned at him.

There now. She’d gotten him. The pupils in those beautiful green eyes seemed to dilate, darkening as he looked at her. He took in a ragged breath, and she could sense his body responding to her - his fingers trembling at her waist, his legs shifting with nervous energy, and oh, yes, that wonderful tightness growing in his jeans. She shifted in his lap, and he bucked his hips toward her. She kissed him again and rocked into him, rising and falling and feeling him gasp beneath her.

She pulled at the neck of his shirt, and he leaned forward so that she could unwrap him from that outermost layer. That wasn’t enough, it was never enough, and she slid her hands up underneath his cotton tee. She got it off him and tossed it aside. Then she leaned back and ran her hands over the wall of his chest, appreciating every sculpted bit of him. His heart was pounding, so hard she could feel each beat reverberating in her palms. She traced his tattoo, a black star wreathed in flames, inked just above his heart, and then, on impulse, leaned down and kissed it. He moaned and lifted one of his hands to the back of her neck, caressing it and making her shiver. She planted a trail of kisses up his chest, up his throat, over his jaw, until she finally reached those beautiful full lips again.

She melted into him, barely certain of where he ended and she began. Everything about this was warmth, and perfection, and the way he kept repeating her name, oh god, the way he whispered it into her mouth like a prayer. His hands clutched at the back of her dress, bunching the fabric, pulling her toward him. She gasped and dug her nails into his back, arching up with him. “God, Dean,” she breathed as she lowered herself down again and rested her head on his shoulder. “God, I love you.”

She hadn’t realized she’d said it, hadn’t even planned on ever saying it out loud. She was floating, untethered, nothing around her but his warmth beneath her. She didn’t need it to feel complete, wouldn’t and didn’t ask for it, but he lifted his hand to her chin and tilted her face up to look at him. He smiled down at her, and he ran his thumb over her bottom lip. “You, too,” he said.


	28. The Argument

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Becca return to Summerview, where Mother is waiting.

Becca blinked at him, focusing in on his face. Had he just said… Had she just… “What,” she asked. The smile he gave her, soft and almost shy, was his answer. She leaned a bit away from him, resting her hands on his shoulders. She stared into his eyes, those warm and bright and rich green eyes, and oh my god, he loved her. She took in an awed breath as the realization hit her. The answer was there, plain on his face. That was love looking back at her. She felt another swell of warmth inside her, filling her lungs until she thought they would burst.

He lifted his hand to stroke her cheek. “We should be getting back,” he said. She slid back reluctantly into her seat, and his hands followed her the whole way. He didn’t want to let her go either. She sighed again, feeling all at once the weight of his importance to her. He was everything, and he was more.

As he shifted back into his own seat, he glanced up, above her eyes, and gave her a smirk. “Guess you’d better take a second to take care of that first.”

“What,” she asked again, lifting a hand to her hair. She felt immediately that things had gone askew, and a quick look in the mirror confirmed that. She looked an absolute mess. She knew how it had happened, but still couldn’t quite believe she’d managed that. She could feel her cheeks go warm as she blushed, and she started the process of undoing her braids.

Her hair fell in loose black waves around her head, and she shook it out. She heard his breath hitch in his throat, and she looked over at him. His eyes were wide, and he was smiling at her. She almost, almost, asked him what again, but she bit that back as she realized what she was about to say. “You should get yourself ready too,” she said, gesturing at his bare chest.

“Yeah,” he said, coming back to the moment. “Yeah, you’re right about that.” He twisted himself and reached into the backseat, where his tee had landed. Becca knew it had to happen, but still she felt a bite of regret when he yanked the cotton over his head and covered up his freckled skin again.

“Beautiful,” she said, wistfully. He glanced up at her, with one eyebrow raised, and she gulped. “I like your tattoo,” she said quickly.

“Yeah?” Dean said as he shrugged into his top shirt again. “You should think about getting one yourself. This one,” he said, and he pulled down the neckline of his tee to point at the tattoo, “is for protection.”

“From…” Becca bit the inside of her cheek. Her mind ran through the stories she knew, but it was crosses that stopped vampires, not stars. What stopped werewolves? Silver bullets, yes, but that wasn’t something that chased them away… wolfsbane? That was an herb, or something, wasn’t it? Not a shape. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of anything that would be scared away by a simple black tattoo. “From what?”

“Demons,” Dean said, matter-of-factly. 

“Oh.” Becca didn’t feel like asking any more questions then. 

She settled back into her seat to ponder. The world was so much bigger than she’d thought it was. There was so much more going on. She’d never questioned her life. Never regretted anything about it. But now. There was just so much she didn’t know about the world. So much she had missed out on. So much she hadn’t explored. So much she hadn’t lived.

Then there was Dean, and suddenly she felt alive. Confused, yes. Anxious, absolutely. By all rights, she should have been absolutely terrified, knowing what was out there. Knowing what was IN there. Somewhere. But she didn’t feel despair. She sat there, next to this exceptional man, and she knew he was going to fight for her. She believed him, and she believed in him, and that was everything that mattered.

They drove back to Summerview in silence. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he three steps ahead, planning their next move? Or was he, like she was, replaying what had just happened? The rules had definitely been broken, but try as she might, Becca didn’t feel guilty for it at all. She remembered how it had felt, being held by him, having his arm around her waist and his hand at her neck. She had never, not once in her life, felt that complete.

When they arrived back at the Inn, and Dean pulled into a parking spot, he didn’t turn off the engine right away. Instead, he turned to her. “Hey,” he said, and his voice trailed off. The emotions running through him then flashed across his face, and Becca felt a jolt of electricity shimmer down her spine, almost as if the current had traveled physically from him to her.

She leaned forward to him, and she kissed his lips, softly. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’m okay.”

He put his hand behind her head, wrapping his fingers in her wavy hair, deepening their kiss. This was real. This was intense. This was living. Becca felt happy then. Absolutely, incandescently happy. When he pulled back, the fierce determination in his eyes and in the set of his jaw made her ache. “You’re gonna be,” he said.

They walked back toward the Inn together, side by side. "We'd better do this in your room," Dean said. "Keep everything as far away from the rest of the building as possible."

Becca was too focused on thinking about the plan, about the unknown which loomed before her. She hadn’t thought about what it would be like to return, hadn’t wanted to think about it, but she had known it would be an issue when she’d left. Sure enough, as she and Dean entered the lobby, Mother looked up from the front desk. In one quick, fluid movement, Mother had lifted up the “back in fifteen minutes” sign and slammed it on the counter. “NOW,” Mother said, pointing toward the kitchens.

Becca bit her lip and met Dean’s eyes. “I’ll be a minute,” she said.

Dean gave her a quick grin, but that grin dropped from his face the second he looked back up toward Mother and saw her glaring at him. “Mrs. Norwood,” he said, attempting a polite greeting, but his low voice sounded incredibly guilty. He cleared his throat, and then he was gone, down the guest hallway toward the stairs.

“After you, young lady,” Mother said.

Becca walked into the dining room. Why did she feel like she was headed for the guillotine? Because she’d broken the rules, she told herself, because she knew she had done wrong. She could deny it, of course. There wasn’t any real proof she’d done anything other than go for a drive. She didn’t have to admit to anything. That was it. Play it cool, play her cards close to her chest, see where this went.

“Have a seat,” Mother said as they went into the kitchens. Becca took a chair at the kitchen table. Mother crossed her arms, tapping her fingers. For a second, she waited. Then she said, “Would you care to explain yourself?”

No. No, she would not. Becca folded her hands on the table in front of her. “What would you like to know?”

Mother lifted her hands to either side of her nose, almost like a frustrated prayer. “Rebecca Jane, you know what I mean.”

“I’m sure I don’t,” Rebecca said stiffly.

“What has gotten into you lately?” Mother lowered her hands, balling them into fists, and rested them against her hips. “Your work’s been slipping, you’ve been fraternizing---” Rebecca tried to interrupt, but Mother barreled on, “---and don’t you sit there and lie to me. I’ve seen the way you act when you’re around him. I know exactly what’s going on there. Do you think I was born this old? Do you think I never felt the kind of things you’re feeling? Of course I have! But you don’t let that get in the way of your responsibilities. If we’d caught Meg running off with a guest like that, she’d be fired. I don’t care how much we like her. I don’t care how good a worker she is. She’d be fired.”

Becca took in a deep breath. Slowly she pushed back her chair, and she rose to her feet, putting her palms flat down on the table. “My whole life,” she said, and she was amazed at how steady her voice was, considering the anger vibrating through her. “My whole entire life, I’ve lived up to my responsibilities. I’ve worked here without complaint. I love Summerview, and I love working here. But if one day can ruin all that, if one single day can ruin every ounce of worth I’ve poured into this place, then I don’t know if I want to work here anymore.”

Mother lifted up a hand to her heart and let out a little gasp. “You don’t mean that.”

“Why not?” Becca’s voice trembled, but she reeled it back in. “Why wouldn’t I want something more out of life? Why do you expect one thing out of me, but not out of Charlie? Where was his ‘but what about your responsibilities’ lecture when he went out on tour with the BVB? Have you told him even one time that we could use him here?”

“Your brother is not the topic at hand,” Mother said.

“It’s a relevant question,” Becca insisted. “Maybe I want to join a band. Maybe I want to take a vacation. Maybe I want to meet somebody, fall in love, travel the country with him. Why do all my maybes have to be dismissed? Why is there only one life open to me?”

Mother laughed a little then. She put the back of her hand to her mouth and laughed again, light and raw and incredulous. She turned away from Becca, and under her breath, she muttered something to herself. It was too quiet, too distant, for Becca to make out everything. But the few words she did hear, those were concerning. “David,” she said, and “curse.”

“What?” Becca said, coming around to the other side of the table.

Mother turned back to her, and Becca could see she was crying. “With everything that’s happened… Your father… Mrs. Kettleman… Charlie… Now you… I’m beginning to think your father was right,” Mother said, “about this family being cursed.”


	29. The Curse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Becca has an honest conversation with her mother, learning more about her father, and then returns upstairs to find a plan to save her underway.

“I’m sorry,” Becca said. “Run that by me again?”

Mother shook her head and wiped the tears from her eyes. “It’s nothing but a lot of nonsense,” she said. “And it’s beside the point. You can’t just do whatever you want and not expect consequences.”

“No,” Becca insisted. “What do you mean, curse?”

“Young lady, if you’re trying to change the subject---”

Becca fought to keep her voice steady. If this was just Mother trying to make Becca feel guilty for wanting more out of life, then she could forget it. But if it wasn’t… if there was something more… “You can’t just say something like that and then not explain it. I need to know. Please.”

Mother sighed. “When we met in college…” Mother’s legs seemed a little unsteady beneath her. She walked over to the table and took a seat. Becca waited, and there was only a moment’s silence before Mother continued. “You were too young to remember. But your father, he was such a superstitious man. Salt over his shoulder, crossing his fingers, all that whistling. I didn’t even know that was a thing to do, whistling to keep things at bay. I just thought it was sweet, the cute boy in my history class, whistling to himself everywhere he went. When we were getting serious, and I wanted marriage, I wanted a family, he was… reticent. I finally asked him, ‘David,’ I said, ‘David, if you don’t want to marry me, just say so.’ He told me that he loved me, said that he wanted to be with me forever, but there was something I needed to know. And that’s when he told me about the Norwood family history, how they seemed to be haunted by bad luck and unhappiness.” Mother waved her hand in the air, dismissively. “I told him it was all nonsense, that coincidence didn’t mean curse. Even when he died that night, that wasn’t a curse. That was a brain aneurysm, that was a tragedy, that was untimely but natural. And I couldn’t spend time dwelling on nonsense, because I had you, and I had Charlie, and I had the Inn to take care of. And we have been happy, haven’t we? We have.”

Except for that vague sense of incompleteness that had been inside Becca her whole life. Except for her father dying. And Charlie leaving. And Mrs. Kettleman dying. And that list of dozens of other victims that Dean had told her about. And the monster that had been hiding out in its egg somewhere in Summerview Inn. That same fucking monster bug that was somewhere inside her now. Becca felt sick to her stomach. There was a curse on the family, although with luck her mother would never have to know that for certain.

She walked up to her mother and hugged her from behind. “I love you,” she said, resting her cheek against the top of her mother’s hair.

Mother raised a hand and lay it on Becca’s arm. “I love you.”

Becca squeezed her, just once, but for a long time, and then let go. “It’s going to be okay,” she promised her, even though deep down she didn’t know if that was the truth or not. She left her then before Mother could respond. Even if Mother had wanted to lay down the law, list the consequences of what Becca had done today, there was no time for that now. She needed to get back upstairs. She needed to know what their next move was.

She took the stairs two at a time and went directly upstairs, to the family rooms. When she opened her bedroom door, she saw Sam standing over the paper-strewn table, Dean arranging various odds and ends on her bed, and another man, who turned startled when she arrived. He was shorter than the others, and older, with a short brown beard and… was that a skull he was holding?

“What kept you?” Sam asked, only half paying attention to her as she shut the door. His hazel eyes scanned the parchment laid out before him, and he called out over his shoulder, “Seven. We need seven teeth.”

The third man lifted the thing he was holding – it was absolutely the skull of some small animal, although Becca couldn’t tell which from here – and examined it. “Yeah,” he said, “we got ‘em.” OH, Becca realized as she recognized his voice. The man on the phone earlier.

“Becca, Bobby,” Dean said. “Bobby, Becca.”

Becca didn’t ask aloud what all this was. She knew there was an explanation, and she also knew it was a thousand percent over her head. Instead, she walked over to Dean, beside the bed.

“You sure you wanna do this?” Bobby asked as he pried teeth loose from the skull with a pocketknife.

“You’re damn right I do,” Dean said. He looked over at Becca, and his jaw was set in a grim line. “We’ve got a game plan, Becca. It’s not great but it’s the only one we’ve got. And we need your okay.”

Becca bit her lip, but she nodded. “I trust you. What is the plan?”

“We draw the bastard out,” Dean answered simply. “To do that, we’re gonna have to make it stop wanting your blood. That’s what this is for.” He gestured at the things laid out on the bed. Some plants Becca knew, and others she didn’t recognize. A jar holding a clear, unidentifiable liquid. A stone mortar and pestle. Bobby leaned forward and dropped the teeth into the mortar. They clinked, ever so softly, as bone hit stone.

“Get the nibima with the ginger too,” Sam told Bobby.

“And a sprig of lavender for a garnish,” Bobby said sarcastically. “I’ve been mixing up this stuff since you were still in diapers, boy. You don’t have to read me the recipe.”

“It’s gotta be right,” Dean said, and although Becca could hear worry there, the most powerful emotion that shone through in his voice was determination. “We gotta get this right.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. He ground the teeth into powder under the pestle and then sprinkled it into that jar, mixing the powder into the liquid. “We gotta make sure it’s done right too.” He paused and looked up at Becca. “You gonna be able to get all this down in one swig?”

“Am I...” Becca grimaced. “I’m going to have to drink that?”

“It ain’t a goddamn lotion,” Bobby said. “And I ain’t gonna lie to you. It tastes like barbequed horseshit. But if you don’t want to join the crew of the Nostromo, you’re gonna chug it like mother’s milk.”

“Look at you, making a movie reference,” Dean said. “A real disgusting one too. What the hell, Bobby.”

“You wanna tell her it’s all roses and kittens, that’s fine by me,” Bobby said as he crumbled one of those plants Becca didn’t know between his fingers and let the leaves fall into the jar. “I for one think it’s better to know what you’re up against.”

“So now I wasn’t wrong to bring her in?”

“Dean,” Sam said, exasperated.

“You’re still a idjit,” Bobby said, “but we gotta work with what we got.”

“When I drink this,” Becca said, watching Bobby as he ground two more plants into the jar, “what’s going to happen?”

“You’re gonna feel like dyin’,” Bobby said, and the calm, straightforward way he said it made Becca’s eyes widen.

“It won’t be painful,” Sam said, immediately reassuring. He came over to stand beside her, and looked down at her with those caring hazel eyes of his. “The worst part’s the taste. Bobby’s right, it does feel like dying, but that’s not what’s happening. It’s more like hibernation. It’ll slow your pulse down enough to make you less appetizing.”

“But I won’t be actually dead.” Becca bit the inside of her cheek. “My blood will still be alive. It’ll just be slower and easier to drink. So it won’t want to leave, will it?” There was silence, then, and she saw Sam and Dean look at each other, passing a glance full of some hidden, significant meaning. “What is it?”

“Don’t worry,” Dean said. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Before Becca had a moment to think about that, Bobby was holding out the jar to her. It looked alarming, to say the least. The clear liquid was cloudy now, a vague unpleasant grey, and she could see bits of leaves, bits of other things, floating listlessly within it. “Better lie down,” Bobby said. “No tellin’ how quickly this’ll work on you.”

The reality of the situation hit her, all at once. What was she doing? What was going on? Was she really going to drink some random concoction handed to her by a man she’d never met, just because of what she’d been told by a man she’d met two days ago? She looked over at Dean, met his piercing green eyes, and thought, yes. Yes, she absolutely was. She trusted him. She loved him. That was her reality now.

She took the jar and settled down on the bed. She swirled it once, watching those flecks spin about, and her stomach churned. “I could call my doctor,” she said, looking over to meet Dean’s eyes. “We’ve got time. I could get him to look me over and take it out.”

“Sure, if you wanna die faster,” Bobby said.

“What he means is, we’d thought of that,” Sam said, looking down at her, waves of compassion radiating from him. “But the lore I’ve found during my research says it wouldn’t work. Going in to get them… It never ends well. It has to come out willingly.”

“This is it,” Dean said. He crouched down next to her, and he took her free hand in his. “Bottom of the ninth, bases are loaded. The only way we walk out of here with the pennant is if you hit a home run.”

Despite herself, Becca couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not quite sure your metaphor works.” She sighed and looked once more at the grey, unappealing liquid in the jar. “But I get what you mean.” She looked back at him, and she said, “You’ve got me, right?”

“I’m right here,” Dean said. He lifted his mouth to hers, and as they kissed, she could feel how much he loved her. Everything would be all right. He was here. He was right here with her. He pulled away, and for a second there, nothing else existed in the world except for him, and for her, and for the certainty between them.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s do this.” She took a deep breath, and she downed that liquid.


	30. The Cure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, Dean, and Bobby put their plan into fruition, and Becca finds herself an active participant.

The bitter, vile taste of that grey concoction was just as Bobby had described. She almost stopped, almost threw up, but she choked it down. Chug it, he’d told her, and by god she’d do it. She had to. When she’d drained the jar, she lowered it to her lap, breathing heavily. She felt dizzy for a second, but the moment passed as quickly as it had come. “How soon do you think this will work,” she asked.

None of them answered her. She lifted her left hand and reached for Dean, but then… he was still holding her left hand. “Dean,” she said, and again he didn’t seem to hear her. She turned to face the other two, but they didn’t meet her eyes. They were almost looking through her.

“That was quick,” Sam said. “Should we be worried?”

Becca certainly thought so. She rose from the bed, and she couldn’t feel her feet. It still felt like she was lying down. She turned, and Dean was checking her pulse. Her body’s pulse. Becca was floating outside her own body. She let out a startled cry. She didn’t understand this, not in the least. She was still physically connected to herself. She could feel Dean’s fingers on her wrist, she could feel the pillow beneath her head, and there was something else she was starting to feel, not quite a headache, but similar. She didn’t know what that was. Everything was too much. They hadn’t said this was supposed to happen. What if it wasn’t? What if something was wrong?

“How’s she lookin’, Dean?” Bobby asked.

“Got a pulse,” Dean answered. “It’s real faint, but it’s there.”

“Good,” Bobby said. “Now for the hard part.”

The way the men moved through the room, so sure, so capable, made Becca feel a little bit better. They did seem to know what they were doing with those leaves and spices and chalk. Bobby was dropping tiny, brittle, light purple shards into the mortar to grind them, and Sam was holding a yellowed piece of parchment, using it as a reference to draw something on the floor, an intricate interwoven design with no beginning and no end. And Dean. He was still holding her hand. He reached up to brush her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. She could still feel him, although that sensation was growing fainter, almost fuzzy. Something else was growing stronger, though, that vague headache. What was that?

“There’s no guarantee this’ll work,” Bobby said. He wasn’t looking at Dean, but Becca could tell he was saying it to him all the same. “We might just be clutchin’ at straws here.”

“It’ll work,” Dean said, and his voice was so solid. “It’s worked before.”

“That was drawin’ ‘em out of a nest,” Bobby said. He stopped working the pestle and this time he did look over at Dean. “Nobody’s ever drawn ‘em out of a person.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t us before,” Dean said. God, he was so stubborn. That look on his face now, that set of his jaw, that shine in his eyes… It was protective, and loving, and completely and beautifully honest. He was strong, and he was determined, and he wanted so much to save her. This. This was why she loved him.

But even as much as she loved him right now, as much as she was feeling, there was an undercurrent of something else pulling at her senses. It was as if she was being drawn away from her emotions, toward feeling… something else. What was that? It wasn’t a headache. It was like… It was like the black and white static on a television set. Physically fizzy, grating, getting louder by the second. She wished she could speak to them. She wished she could let them know what she was feeling. She wished she knew why this was happening.

“Okay,” Sam said as he stood up from the floor. He put the chalk down on the table and patted his palms together to brush off the dust. “Ready.”

“Almost,” Bobby said as he ground the pestle into the mortar. “I’m still workin’ on that eggshell. Dean, you wanna get the salt?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, but he didn’t move right away. He kept his hand on hers for a moment longer, running his thumb lightly over her fingers. She couldn’t feel that. She couldn’t feel him anymore. All she could feel was that static. It was so loud now, and oddly pointed. It was as if she was being pulled along a line, as if there was a trail she should be following, a path she should be taking. She could feel it so strongly, she could almost see it. It led through the wall, down the hall, into Charlie’s room.

“Done,” Bobby said as he poured the dust from the mortar into a bowl with the other ingredients he’d prepped. “Best get to steppin’, Dean.”

Dean sighed. He squeezed her hand one more time, and god how much she wished she could have felt it. There was nothing now but that vague buzzing, and if she concentrated, really concentrated, those lines of static extended out of Summerview Inn and into the world. What WAS that? She was so distracted by her reaching thoughts that she didn’t move as Dean stood, and he passed right through her. She hadn’t felt that either, and that frightened her. Dean pulled a large can of table salt from their bag of supplies and walked over to the door. He poured a thick line across the base of the door, covering that tiny gap above the floor. “Get the window for me, would you, Sammy?” Dean tossed Sam the can, and Sam caught it, cleanly and easily, as if that was the sort of thing they did all the time.

Dean took the bowl from Bobby and moved over to Becca’s body where it lay in the bed. “Y’all good?” he asked, looking over at the others, who stood in the two outside corners of the room. Both Sam and Bobby nodded. Bobby’s expression was grim, but the look Sam gave Dean was one of absolute faith.

Dean took a pinch of the powdered mixture and sprinkled it on the pillow, beside her head. He leaned in, and he whispered, and Becca could hear it, clear as day. “Stay with me, Becca.” He kissed her then on her cheek, and oh god, oh god, why couldn’t she feel anything anymore? She tried to call out to him, but it didn’t work. She could feel that static burrowing into her mind, laying a foundation that she couldn’t shake. She couldn’t tell them what was happening. She was on her own, and that terrified her. She needed to stay grounded. She needed to stay tethered. She shoved aside that static pull and watched Dean sprinkle a trail of that mixture down the bed, across the floor, toward that chalk circle Sam had drawn. Dean was real. Dean was here. Dean was helping.

Suddenly she could smell something. Sharp, spicy, sweet, like cinnamon. It pulled at her, an immediate compulsion. What was that? What… The static lines around her started to pulse, rising and falling in waves. It was a message, she realized. She could feel it. She could hear it. Nest. Nest. Nest. Someone had broken into a nest. Someone was threatening the babies. The babies were broken, broken, she needed to get to them, to save them.

Then the world around her shifted. Her vision went black, and she felt like she’d fallen, like gravity had suddenly caught up to her. She gasped, loudly, harshly, and her chest arched up with the force of it.

“DON’T MOVE,” she heard Dean say. “Becca, for god’s sake, don’t move.”

Becca went still. She blinked and stared upward. There was the overhead light, and that familiar triangle chip. She was in her bed again. She was in her body again. She could still feel those pulsating lines, she could still feel that far-reaching web, but she could feel everything else – she was back in her body again.

“Come on, you ugly bastard,” Dean said. “Come to papa.”

There was sudden movement beside Becca’s head. She went completely still, absolutely terrified, but she couldn’t hold back the yelp that escaped her. There were too many legs. Just too many legs. Her eyes darted away from the purple monstrosity on her pillow, over to Dean, who was waving a hand over the bowl, as if scenting the air with it.

“Yeah, you don’t like that, do you, buddy?” Dean carefully stepped over the circle Sam had drawn. “You wanna come teach me a lesson?”

The thing scuttled down off the bed. Becca sat bolt upright. She could feel the anger. She could feel the danger. It was still sending out the alarm, calling for help, all the way up and down those infinitely long static lines. She felt it pulling at her, urging her to come to its aid. The babies were in danger. He had hurt the babies.

Becca moved to the end of her bed, and watched as it moved toward that circle Sam had drawn. It moved steadily, clunkily, vaguely unbalanced on its multitude of legs. “Come on,” Dean said, “that’s it. Come get me.” But as the Bisszikade reached the chalk circle, it stopped. It touched the very rim of the circle with the tip of one leg, and then pulled back. “Well shit,” Dean said.

Faster than she would have thought possible, the bug turned into a purple blur as it skimmed the rim of that circle. Dean leapt over it again, cursing as he did, but the Bisszikade was still incoming, rounding that circle, with one unstoppable goal. It didn’t even react when Sam narrowly missed it with a blade, or when Bobby tried to stomp it under his boots. The other people in the room didn’t matter. It was only THAT one, that one who had the babies. He couldn’t let it get to him. It would bite him. It would poison him. He would die. Her ice-cold fear for Dean’s safety fought with her fire-hot rage for how he had endangered the nest.

As he dodged the creature’s bite, Dean banged into her dresser, toppling a lamp and knocking into her radio. His elbow hit the power button, and the radio burst into life as it tumbled to the floor. She’d left it on the classical station, and they were in the middle of a piece by Camille Saint-Saëns. The thing froze. It drew its legs up toward its body, and Becca felt pain. She cried out and threw her hand to her head.

Dean called out her name, but she barely heard it. There was pain, in her head and in her bones. The radio started to crackle out. Something had broken when it fell, and the sound was fading. The sound faded, and the pain did too.

Then there was silence, and a moment later, the Bisszikade darted toward Dean again. It was only a matter of time before he couldn’t dodge its attacks. Becca did the only thing she could think of to do. She whistled. It stung like hell, like she had known it would, but she forced herself to fight through it.

Immediately the chase stopped. The Bisszikade crinkled in on itself, trembling a little. Becca whistled again, this time thinking back on the sound of David Norwood’s voice. The thing cringed into a tight little ball of purple legs and violet feelers. It did not like that, not at all. Becca didn’t either. It was as if the sound waves were cutting into her skin. As if the vibrations were breaking her shell. She stung, and she whistled, and she cried. She was frozen in place, but so was that thing.

Dean kicked the crumpled Bisszikade with his shoe. It flew in a gentle arc and landed in the center of that chalk circle. There was an ear-piercing shriek, and it turned over on its back. It wailed and crumpled, its legs folding in on itself, and god DAMN it that hurt. Becca doubled over in the bed, clutching her stomach. She felt Dean’s arms circle around her from behind, heard him call her name, but all she could do was gasp for breath.

Finally, finally, the pain faded. She could still feel the message being sent out, but it was further away now as the nearer static lines turned stagnant, almost as if waiting for further instructions. She rocked slowly in Dean’s arms, letting the world come back around her. “You did good,” he was saying. “You did real good, Becca.”

“It’s dead now,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She could feel it. 

“Yeah,” Sam said. He stepped over it and ground it into the floor for good measure. “How’d you do that?”

“That’s a good question,” Dean said. “How’d you know that would work?”

“Something happened,” Becca said. She reached up, and put her hand on his arm that was wrapped around her chest. “I can… I can still feel it. Not that one. The rest of them.”

“What in the hell?” Bobby stepped forward. “The rest of ‘em?”

“It’s like…” Becca shook her head. “I don’t know. Bees? Ants? It was sending out messages, and I was getting them. And I can feel where the messages go. I can feel the whole system.” She reached out, pointing along one of the lines. “That one ends in Charlie’s room.”

“Balls,” Bobby said as he headed for the door. “Which one?”

“Two doors that way,” Becca gestured.

Bobby swung open the door, ignoring the salt line, and disappeared into the hallway. Sam followed, giving Dean one quick glance as he did. Becca shivered, and Dean held her closer. 

“It’s weird,” Becca said. “I can still feel it. I can still feel them. I can see it. I can see the message lines. I can see the nests. I can feel them sleeping.”

“You’re okay, though? Now?”

“I am,” Becca said, feeling the truth of it as she melted into his arms. This now, even with everything, this was good, this was safety. This was home. She leaned back and turned her face toward him. “Thank you for saving me.”

He lifted her chin with his hand. “Thank you for saving me first,” he said, and then he kissed her.

“Becca,” Sam said, slamming back into the room. She jolted away from Dean, startled. “Your brother. What did he take with him when he left?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “His clothes, his drum set. Why?” Becca was beginning to feel frightened again.

“Something’s gone from his wall, and whatever that was, he needs to get rid of it now.”

“We got ourselves a double yolker,” Bobby said as he came into the room. “God damn it.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Dean asked as he stood up.

“It means,” Bobby said, slowly and sarcastically, “you need to listen when Sam tells you something. There’s more bug sign in there. This thing’s parent laid more than one egg. Looks like a potential nest.”

“Have they hatched?” Dean’s voice was all business, and Becca felt a little chill run down her spine.

“They didn’t hatch in there,” Sam said. “But they’ll hatch soon.”

“What’s all this talkin’ for? We gotta go before these things eat the entire Eastern seaboard,” Bobby said. “Get your asses movin’, idjits.”

“I’m coming too,” Becca said as she leapt to her feet. All three of them turned to her, incredulously. 

“In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in a little bit of a hurry,” Bobby said. 

“You can’t argue with me on this. If time is of the essence, you’d be stupid to go without me. I can feel them. I can tell where they are. You need me.”

Dean gave her that smile of his, that low, slow, seductive smile, and stepped toward her. “You’re right about that.” He held out his hand. “Ready to go make some more bad decisions?”

She grabbed his hand in hers, and off they went. She didn’t know what was going to happen. She didn’t know how quickly they would find the eggs, or how long the journey would take. But one thing was certain. Becca had never been more ready for anything in her life.


End file.
